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Stop Bothering CS! Be Respectful!

Canthoney

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Exactly what my post title says! This may not apply to everyone so don’t feel personally attacked, this is more to do with people repeating the same messages over and over:

You can gather more information on this forum and other social media than you can on Rivian‘s website talking to customer service, so please stop spamming them with the same messages 1000 times over. No, they don’t know anything about ocean coast, or the R1S’s timeline, and even if they did they’re probably not allowed to tell you.

And if you do reach out to them, please be respectful and understand that they probably received the same message more times than you can count. I understand we are all excited for the R1T, and the R1S, but they have very limited information to work with, and scripts to stick to, and getting upset at them doesn’t solve anything.
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100% agreed. But I've seen the reddit crowd do this far more than anyone here fwiw.
 

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Canthoney

Canthoney

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100% agreed. But I've seen the reddit crowd do this far more than anyone here fwiw.
I know, I’ve seen it elsewhere too. It just needs to stop, you’re not going to get any blood from a rock so I don’t see the point in asking them questions they will just get worked up about because they know they won’t give them the answer they want. And at least on Reddit, they could probably make a rule about complaining CS posts.
 
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Canthoney

Canthoney

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That’s essentially how I felt when I went to the 1st mile event in September, but I wasn’t going to be smug about it, or ask them questions that I knew they didn’t have any answers to!! Lol.
 

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I posted this in another thread, but might be insightful for those who don't know the contact center industry well.

I've worked in the contact center industry most of my career in executive IT/infrastructure management. You will be surprised how little CS knows. As someone said above, they are given a script and that's it. They are trained to be polite and communicate only what they know. It is of no use for them to hide anything. And with that said, they are not told anything because management does not want false/early information released.

Even their supervisors rarely know anything more than that. They might know of "new information coming soon" but they likely aren't told until a day or two before it happens. Then it is disseminated down to the CS agents.

Getting angry at them accomplishes nothing.

HOWEVER, they do disposition every contact they have with a customer. That information is entered into some sort of CRM application (Salesforce, etc). Depending on what fields are built into that CRM, it generates reports to upper management.

If "Customer asking about FE/OC interior delays" is a selectable field in the CRM, then management will start to notice. I'm betting that isn't in there.

It'll be very basic selections and if you're lucky a free-form field which most agents will leave blank or put "N/A" because it is extra work. These agents have 5-20 chats going on at a time and have SLAs (service level agreements) to handle them in a specific amount of time. When one ends, another begins. They have between 0 to 10 seconds of rest. This is happening for 8-9 hours a day. You know as a CS agent, you can get fired if you're 2 seconds late coming back from a break/lunch? Workforce management and scheduling is highly dependent on these types of things and if you have global contact center coverage, a few people being 30 seconds late means calls aren't getting answered and customer wait, and the client (Rivian or whoever) loses money exponentially.

CS reps have a very difficult job and often are paid very little. Much of the time these roles are outsourced to the Asia Pacific region (Rivian is probably not there yet) and those folks are even more scripted.

Anyway, that's my blurb about CS/contact center. :)
 

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I posted this in another thread, but might be insightful for those who don't know the contact center industry well.

I've worked in the contact center industry most of my career in executive IT/infrastructure management. You will be surprised how little CS knows. As someone said above, they are given a script and that's it. They are trained to be polite and communicate only what they know. It is of no use for them to hide anything. And with that said, they are not told anything because management does not want false/early information released.

Even their supervisors rarely know anything more than that. They might know of "new information coming soon" but they likely aren't told until a day or two before it happens. Then it is disseminated down to the CS agents.

Getting angry at them accomplishes nothing.

HOWEVER, they do disposition every contact they have with a customer. That information is entered into some sort of CRM application (Salesforce, etc). Depending on what fields are built into that CRM, it generates reports to upper management.

If "Customer asking about FE/OC interior delays" is a selectable field in the CRM, then management will start to notice. I'm betting that isn't in there.

It'll be very basic selections and if you're lucky a free-form field which most agents will leave blank or put "N/A" because it is extra work. These agents have 5-20 chats going on at a time and have SLAs (service level agreements) to handle them in a specific amount of time. When one ends, another begins. They have between 0 to 10 seconds of rest. This is happening for 8-9 hours a day. You know as a CS agent, you can get fired if you're 2 seconds late coming back from a break/lunch? Workforce management and scheduling is highly dependent on these types of things and if you have global contact center coverage, a few people being 30 seconds late means calls aren't getting answered and customer wait, and the client (Rivian or whoever) loses money exponentially.

CS reps have a very difficult job and often are paid very little. Much of the time these roles are outsourced to the Asia Pacific region (Rivian is probably not there yet) and those folks are even more scripted.

Anyway, that's my blurb about CS/contact center. :)
That is a great point - it was the overwhelming response to CS after the 3/1 price fiasco that likely convinced them to roll that back. But that is different from the daily pestering that @Canthoney is talking about.
 

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I also help guide a number of CS functions where I work. They're good people working within a pretty rigid set of procedures and scripts. Where I work, they have plenty of opportunity to escalate issues so that we can address new issues as they arise.

I'd hope that Rivian has similar escalation pathways, but I don't know. But politely saying "people are wondering, can you please ask the reporting chain to develop an answer about [issue x]" isn't out of line in my experience.

Badgering for answers they can't give you and getting indignant about it (even if they're repeating non-responsive and frustrating answers) is less than pointless and can easily veer into abusiveness.
 

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To be fair, I think respectfully providing feedback, even dissatisfaction, is fair game. But they key word is respectfully.

I've contacted them to express my disappointment on the lack of AA/CP but I did it via the support email and thanked them profusely in the email for hearing me out. I knew there was no need to bother the live chat or call with that kind of feedback. My only goal was for them to log a data point on community sentiment, not to take my frustrations out on some low level support specialist.

But man, I've seen some folks post screenshots of themselves being downright rude to CS over chat and I just cant imagine who raised these people. The entitlement is beyond me. So big agree with @Canthoney on this. Be kind people. And drink your Ovaltine.
 
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Canthoney

Canthoney

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Wait I shouldn't ask CS when my R1S will be delivered or why no CarPlay or why no maxpack or any other number of things we all know the answers too.

Cool just checking.
I mean you can, just don’t be a d**k about is my point, mainly. ?
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