Lord save me from "customer service"
A glimpse of hell as you are put on hold and required to listen to the music for all eternity.
“Please listen carefully as our options have changed. Press one if you want to speak Swahili.”
The seemingly endless instructions delivered from the mountaintop are confusing if not incomprehensible. Eventually an agent who speaks with a nearly imcomprehensible foreign accident will tell you’r in the wong department and pleasantly suggest you take your problem elsewhere. Off you go into the aether to wait in the seemingly never ending queue. Enter the tenth circle of hell.
“There are two customers ahead of you,” will play repeatedly. But as we experienced yesterday trying to contact a pharmacist, we actually waited more than 30 minutes to get to the head of the line.
Talk about time bandits. Whoever created these and other supposedly improved but devilish “customer service” pathways should be condemned to eternity trying to figure out how to follow the maze of instructions they themselves have constructed.
Last night Barb and I tried to make reservations for a flight to Dulles Airport near D.C. Confusion squared. “What’s your frequent flyer number?” Well, I’d give that to you, but I can’t find it and you won’t let me into my account to get it unless I provide it. Catch 22.
I didn’t keep track of the time we spent—-maybe 45 minutes or more—-trying to push the right keys before giving up and calling. Of course that locked us in the room that’s playing not-our-song until someone finally opened up and permitted us to enter the promised land,
Here’s insanity: “If you don’t remember your password, click on ‘I forget my password’ to change it. You’d like to shout into the phone,”No you idiot,it won’t work.” But no one is listening.
Oh sure, it’ll be my fault because I clicked on the wrong icon, you dummy. Never mind that the instructions were so lengthy and confusing that I spun off into digital hades. This is especially frustrating because if you continue to screw up you’ll hear this dreaded words, “Your account is locked.”
Then the fun really begins. You find yourself on a “restore your account page” that enlightens you with a six-step procedure to get unlocked. Get to third step and in your ignorance or frustration, you hit the wrong prompt and you’ve got to start all again.Try the phone again, but be prepared to let your dinner get cold.
I just now tried to look up my wireless and television account to be greeted by this: “We want to keep your info safe.We haven't noticed any activity in a while. We're redirecting you for your security.”
The hell you say! I spent more than an hour yesterday trying to figure out my streaming service goes haywire so often.
Streaming service. Now there’s gem. How many of you are absolutely sure that you haven’t paid for duplicative service, E.g., you pay to watch Major League Baseball but find it free on on a different service. You try to cancel the pay-to-view channel, but you waste your time trying to find how to do it on line because, well, it’s being cleverly hidden to stop you from junking the service.
Okay, I’m old and too feeble to get it. Kids seem to get it before they can walk. I’ll be dead soon, so why bother clearing it up for us geezers.
It makes me wish that I could return to the 1940s and ‘50s. when all you needed to turn on some music was to turn a knob. Okay, you had to wait a tiny bit for the tv or radio tubes to warm up. But you don’t have to struggle through a complex protocol to listen or watch. If the radio or tv didn’t work, a guy would come out and replace a tube. Simple. You only needed his phone number to ask for the service, instead of trying to locate a customer service button on a web page, then slog through a menu too technical or complicated to understand.
Back then you’d have to get off the couch to answer the telephone. But you simply picked it and someone was there. In my lifetime I’ve never had to call the phone company to fix the phone, which, by the way, it owned. Okay you had only a handful of program choices, but they were free. And how many pre-teens and teens got victimized and abused by a pervert or bully on the other end?
I don’t see a way to return to the simpler life when you didn’t have to spend literally hours to get the personal service that you deserve—-although I was surprised when I recently called an auto dealership and areal person answered and asked how she could direct your call. Bravo.
Unlike, say, McDonalds, where you need to puzzle your way through an automated menu that has replaced real jobs for real people. We had to ask a young lady in line to help us get the food we wanted. She didn’t even snicker at our confusion. Bless her.
Years ago as a reporter I wrote about an Illinois Institute of Technology design professor in the early days of computer-assisted creation. His first question always was, does the design serve the customer needs and conveniences? Sadly I don’t remember his name but he insisted that a chair or whatever the computer designed was comfortable. That kitchen appliances could be cleaned without having to take them apart.
Reminds me of my recent visit to auto shop to find out why the dashboard light on my Sonata was warning me of low tire pressure, when the tires were fully inflated. Just to diagnose the problem was $170 and more than $300 to fix it. Same with the digital screen that gave me all those good choices, like GPS or what radio station I was listening to. I declined. But the service specialist told me that it would be unsafe to drive without the low-tire warning. Never mind that for my first 50 years of driving I knew when my tires needed inflating, without the warning light.
Back in my youth, you’d take you car into the corner service station and the guy would tell you if you need a new carburetor or distributor. Now you need a computer to diagnose the assorted chips that crowd the car so fully that sometimes the hood or the dashboard must be removed to get at the black boxes.
How many appliances have you bought that does include a highly detailed and confusing operating manual? As expert as the technical staff might be, they don’t seem to notice how well or difficult it is for the non-technical customers to use it. Maybe one thing that can be done to restore sanity is to give the customer service or marketing staff the final say about the design of digital equipment. And especially somehow knows how to write clearly. People who value the ease of use, especially by customers who may not to be or chose not to be technically literate.
Given a choice, consumers will flock to those products and services. Because we’ve got more important things to do other than trying to understand the gobbledygook so characteristic of today’s operating manuals.