I often wonder whether I am the only person who dreads making a telephone call to any company or corporation these days?
Computerised, mechanised call reception is supposed to assist us in getting through to the right person with the right query. But at the end of the process just how many of us do actually feel assisted?
For those yet to have the pleasure - and there can't be many - this is roughly how it goes. You call the number and a robot with a matter-of-fact voice offers you several options, none of which quite match your query. You plump for the nearest one to it. Dreadful music ensues, interspersed periodically with a transparently insincere reminder that the faceless multi-national entity in question does value your call, and implores you to listen to more music until such as a time that you can be routed to the only real live person that they are prepared to pay to remain in the building to talk to you.
When that person finally does get round to speaking to you, that is where your nightmare begins. For he/she won't have been trained to think outside of the box, nor to field any questions other than those written into the banal script that is the alpha and the omega of their entire working existence. When you become angry the voice becomes apologetic (sometimes), but their expressions of regret at not being able to understand your question - let alone to answer it - seldom reach the intensity of the very real anger and frustration that you have by now begun to experience.
You ask to be transferred to someone sensible and after much indignation and avoidance they relent, offer to transfer you, subject you to more music, and then you are cut off. Back to Square One.
No matter how hard the advocates of this new way try to persuade me that it is more efficient than the way we did things before, I know that it isn't. We may have sent exploratory space expeditions to Mars and created the World Wide Web, but we have yet to devise a telephone answering system that beats a real live human being who actually knows what you are talking about.
This applies to the travel industry every bit as much as it applies everywhere else, and it was truly reassuring when I spoke to a luxury travel booking service recently that was owner-managed and - well - human! The experience of having an intelligent conversation about luxury cruises and hotels in the Indian Ocean as opposed to trying to get the disinterested voice on the other end of the line to understand the complexities of my postal address was truly a joy.
Call me Luddite if you will, but there is no substitute for personal human contact. Those who believe they are saving money by factoring out the human touch will, in my view, come one day to regret their short-sightedness.
Mark Richards is a professional writer working for The Middle Man, a business promotion service using its experience and expert knowledge of marketing strategy to generate important new business for its clients at a surprisingly low cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment