|
“Press
one for English, press two for Spanish”
“If you know your parties extension you may dial it at any time.”
-
“If you don’t know your parties extension, then you must suffer
through the rest of this call.”
“Please listen closely as our menu options have changed.”
“Press one if you desire new service.”
“Press two if you are an existing customer and wish to ask a question
about your bill.”
“Press three if you are an existing customer and are having technical
issues”
“Press four if you wish to schedule an appointment.”
“Press five if you wish to us to deliver an Yak to your house.”
“Press six if you would like to hear our options again.”
“Sorry pressing the ‘o’ button will not get you a live operator
as we do not have any.”
“Please call again, we look forward to serving you, goodbye.”
Even
if you do get into some extension this is what you are likely to
hear: “Our representatives are busy helping other customers like
yourself. Our calls are answered in the order in which they were
received. Your approximate call waiting time is ….46 minutes, please
hold.”
Don’t live humans work at these places any longer?
I don’t know about you people but if the so called ‘information
age’ was designed to make things speed up and be more efficient,
then I must have missed the train when it was leaving the station.
Several weeks
ago, I called one of the credit card companies for one reason or
another and within one minute I was talking to a real live American
person. I was so impressed I told her I would never stop using that
card again for that very reason.
I hate pushing button after button after button in order to get
some issue resolved.
Think about all of the money these major corporations save just
by having a small customer service department to handle these incoming
calls. Most of the time everyone I know just gets discouraged and
hangs up without talking to anyone. This certainly is one way of
getting rid of customer complaints. No complaints? Everything must
be good.
In the old days
(maybe ten years ago) you called and spoke to a person called a ‘receptionist’
who heard your voice and said something such as “Good morning, may
I help you?”
Then you would ask to speak to someone in the service department or
whatever.
Then she would say something very nice like… “Certainly sir, if you’ll
hold on just a moment I’ll get Mr. Baxter on the line for you.”
Ah, but I can only hope for the return of the good old days when this
was possible. Somehow I don’t it will ever return.
What
irks me even more are the robot answering machines.
“If you would like to hear about our specials…say the word special”.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get that… did you say the word Tanganyika?”
“Let’s try again….if you’d like to hear our business hours…says the
word…hours.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t understand you, did you say the word proletariat?”
“I’m sorry I can’t understand you, please call again when you are
sober. Thank you, goodbye.”
Then
you start all over again.
How about the offices that have a list of personnel that you must
listen to in order to get the extension of the person you are calling?
“For a list of company personnel, please press the pound key.”
Naturally the person you want to speak with is named something like
Harry Ziggerwitz, so you must wade through all of the other seventy-five
employees before you reach old Harry, who has left for the day and
now you hear:
“Hi, this is Harry Ziggerwitz, I’m not available to take this call
at this time, please leave me a detailed message along with your name,
phone number, date of birth, time you called, type of car you drive,
your mothers maiden name, what television programs you watch most
often and if you like or dislike toll roads. I’ll call you when I
return which may not be for several weeks. If you need something important,
please redial and ask for my assistant’s extension from the company
directory. Her name is Shelia Zumwald.”
Makes you want to live in a cave and use a rotary phone. In fact rotary
callers get better service don’t they? “If you’re a rotary caller,
please hang on the line and a customer service representative will
be with you in a moment.”
Think I’ll try this from now on…I’ll report back to you on how effective
it is. |
