h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, this is my first tentative steps towards creating something for the guide and if anyone can be bothered to read it, I would appreciate some feedback.

http://www.h2g2.com/A465031

I really can't tell if I'm going in the right direction, as I'm too close to all of this, having dealt with six completely seperate customer service places in six months and found them all equally "helpful"

Thanks in advance for any pointers/suggestions (e.g. "Why don't you learn to spell") .

I think this is a marvelous first jab at an entry. Here are a few recommendations:

1) Look over the spelling a bit. There are a couple of words masquerading as other words.

2) Try explaining why exactly companies do this with customer service departments. Do they have shoddy business ethics? Does convincing people not to use their warranties save them lots of money? Is it just industry practice?

3) Consider including runarounds common for more technical problems like computer errors. For instance, one common runaround here is to barrage the caller with a series of really stupid 'solutions' that eventually tire out the caller. (Is your computer turned on? How about your monitor? Do you know how to use your mouse? Can you type on your keyboard?) The glory of this is the customer service representative can have never used a computer before, and yet most callers will not get past the information included in their handy reference notebook. Another common trick is for the hardware vendor to blame the software, and the software vendor to blame the hardware.

4) Consider explaining how phone menus are often needlessly complicated to confuse the caller. That way, they have to hang up and try again multiple times. You know the drill: Press 2 to return to the previous menu. 'Press 148 to listen to this menu again. Press 292823457 to hear more options. Or... (after 200 other options) stay on the line to speak to a representative. *cue irritating hold music*

4) Finally, consider mentioning whether there are, indeed, any customer service departments that are run properly. And if there is such a thing, remind your reader to be utterly surprised and thank the representative on the phone profusely.

5) Consider renaming your entry 'Poor Customer Service Departments' or something like that. You want the reader to be able to guess the sort of satirical tone the entry will take. That way, they'll be in the right frame of mind to read it.

Righty ho, I've tried to balance the thing a bit.

1) Sorry, blind as a , I can't see these for looking, could you point me at them, please .

2) As I said, I've tried to balance the entry a bit.

3) An excellent suggestion. I'm trying to keep the entry a bit more generic, so I've added a generalised version of this.

4) Another excellent suggestion, now added to the entry.

5) Fair point; I've added a (UK) to the entry title, since this defines the bulk of my knowledge, but as I'm trying to balance the entry a bit I want to keep the main thrust.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'The h2g2 Writing Workshop' to 'Customer Services (UK)'.

This Conversation has been moved because thias entry has now been recommended by a Scout from Peer Review.