Phone Frustrations

 Anyone old enough to remember when a government agency, a private company or doctor's office had a live, human being -- once called a switchboard operator -- on duty to answer the telephone?

These days in the name of saving money (another way to be seen keeping taxes low or to pad the chief executive's bloated salary) the switchboard operator has been replaced by an expensive piece of equipment generating recorded voice messages. We're usually guided through a menu of directions to "press 1" for this and "press 2" for that. We're instructed to pay attention because "the menu has changed."

Stock images from Pixabay.com

Then, there are the responses you get after reaching the correct extension.

1. "Leave message" -- In too many offices, returning phone calls is a low priority and is done at the end of the work day. What about the guy who calls at 8:30 in the morning and is in Tucumcari to help his sister at 4:45 in the afternoon, unable to take the call? Then he has a message, and the cycle begins again.

2. "Please hold" -- This is the answer you get from services that actually must have a human to respond but have not hired enough people and/or installed enough phone lines to perform this service in an efficient manner. You've been there and experienced predicted hold times exceeding 30 minutes. The executive who signed off on this disastrous "customer service" should be fined for each minute of hold time over two minutes. 

3. Callback confusing landlines with smartphones -- These days the assumption seems to be everyone is using a smartphone for all calls. When these people who are supposed to be providing a service to you want an immediate response, they send a text instead of calling.

Extremely frustrating. But, heck, maybe AI will figure it out.




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