The Federal Communications Commission announced last week that it wants to crack down on call centers. No one likes dealing with customer service over the phone, but don’t be surprised if this government intervention makes an already annoying experience even worse.
“Consumers in the U.S. regularly experience frustration and inconsistent outcomes when they connect with a customer service call center located abroad,” the FCC said. The agency also pointed to language barriers and security concerns before introducing a raft of proposed rules for companies.
The FCC wants to set caps on the number of calls that happen with people abroad while giving customers the choice to speak with someone in the United States. The bureaucracy would also like to force cable, internet and phone firms to disclose the location of whoever is taking your call and require language proficiency requirements.
A classic move by socialists looking to expand the reach of the state is to find experiences that people find frustrating and promise that bigger government can help. It’s a tactic more common among figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) than a Republican-controlled FCC, but this isn’t the first time Chairman Brendan Carr has embraced a bigger role for government.
His most aggressive tactics include threatening the licenses of networks like ABC and CBS through “news distortion” investigations, notably pressuring Disney to temporarily suspend comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show, which had the predictable effect of making the comedian more popular.
Managing how private firms handle call centers will backfire too. More agents moved overseas because it made economic sense, and companies could find enough human capital to provide a needed level of service. (Millions of Indians and Filipinos would no doubt ace an English proficiency test.) If consumers valued native-English speakers enough, they would value companies who raise prices to provide a better call experience with more expensive agents.
Forcing the issue simply means longer wait times and higher prices. Or, as is so often the case, regulations will become irrelevant as technology advances. Many of the problems that Carr and his big-government allies seek to resolve will be handled by advances in artificial intelligence.
The agency will vote on this proposal soon, which opens a period when the public can weigh in. But regulators always have their minds made up once they decide what they think is best for the public, and that would just be a formality.
The story of the FCC is a classic tale of a zombie government agency. It was established nearly a century ago to regulate communications over limited broadcast wavelengths, but the internet has made that largely irrelevant.
Now it gropes for new ways to justify its existence. Trying to centrally plan how private companies handle their call centers is the latest dumb idea, but it won’t be the last to come out of an agency that should no longer exist.
The post The FCC thinks it knows best appeared first on Washington Post.
