Lily Tomlin became famous playing uncaring telephone operator “Ernes- tine” on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In TV show of the late 1960s/early 70s. Customer service personnel in 2014 are required by current employers
to act even more detached than the oftentimes obnoxious Ernestine.

TURN TABLES ON CUSTOMERS
BY MAKING COMPANIES
INACCESSIBLE BY PHONE

Customer service people obsolete

TALK RADIO MAY BE LAST
— AND ONLY — INDUSTRY
TO WELCOME CALL-INS
 
By David Maril
 
I was listening to a Ravens’ post-game radio show on WBAL the other day and when the hosts started encouraging listeners to call in with comments, it hit me that talk radio is one of the few places where a business wants its telephone to ring.

Here’s a prediction:  In 10 years — no, make that five years — you will no longer be able to reach large-sized businesses or any companies of significant corporate size by telephone.

If you need to communicate with your bank, telephone company or insurance carrier you’ll either send them an email or leave some type of message on their website.

We are almost at that point now.

The business world is already cutting back, streamlining manpower; and  personalized customer service is going the way of the milkmen who used to deliver to your door.

What happens now when you try to call a company to complain about charges on a bill? Most statements don’t even have a phone number listed.

If you are fortunate enough to discover a number in fine-print on the reverse side of the last page, it’s a lesson in eyestrain and torture trying to decipher it.

Good luck if you think you can find a phone number on the company’s website. Most avoid including their corporate address and phone.

And, it turns out, the thing big companies detest almost as much as phone calls is mail. Hey, opening envelopes requires extra work and labor costs.

If your perseverance pays off enough to locate a number and you call, right off the bat you are told to “listen closely because some of our options have changed.”

Translation: “We want to make it even more difficult and time-consuming before you talk to a human being so you’ll think twice about ever calling us again.”

After being asked a dozen recorded questions — and you are out of luck if you have a rotary phone  —  to supposedly direct your call to the right customer-service person, you are advised that “due to an unusually high caller volume, you may have a longer waiting time on hold.”

This, despite the fact it’s 5 a.m. West Coast time.

SWAMPED IF MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE CALL

Translation: “Due to the fact we’ve fired two-thirds of our customer service people, there’s nobody left to answer the phone and we’re swamped if more than two people call.”

When your call finally does get connected, you hear three rings, getting your hopes up that someone will answer, before a recording comes on urging you to go to the website to conduct your business — but if you do want to wait on the line, “your call is important to us and will be answered by the next available agent.”

Translation: “Give up and get off the line! Why should we be paying someone to talk to you?”

The phone starts ringing again, and just when you think you’re being answered the same recorded message comes on yet again.

What follows is several minutes of intolerable recorded “elevator” music, alternating with long gaps of silence, followed by the same recorded message about website access, your call being so important, and high caller volume.

The strategy is that most sane callers will be ready to flip out after about 10 minutes of this and give up.

If you are lucky, you’ll finally get a person — and we won’t even speculate here where that customer service associate is located — to answer some time in the next half hour.

But right before the customer service person finally does pick up the phone, you will be told that “to insure quality service, your call may be recorded.”

‘WE ARE RECORDING EVERYTHING YOU SAY’

Translation:  “Don’t get too tough; and watch what you say when you speak to us. We are recording everything you say and it can be used against you.”

If the customer service person can’t help you, it’s often because the information can only be obtained “during normal business hours.”

It’s impossible to be angry with the customer reps: You can hear the frustration in their voices, knowing their jobs are in the process of becoming obsolete.

Trying to handle three times more calls than they should be required to, and having to regularly deal with callers who are in a bad mood to begin with, is an unreasonable task.

When they finish, they are ordered to ask you if there’s anything else “I can help you with today.”

The appropriate answer is to have them switch you to a supervisor to complain that the company should hire more help.

But of course, how many supervisors or management people still take phone calls?

And if you agree to allow the company to call you back to participate in a customer survey on how your request or issue was handled, the whole process is automated.
 
davidmaril@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
“Inside Pitch” is a weekly opinion column written for Voice of Baltimore by David Maril.
 
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