Honesty...Isn't It Refreshing? (OT)

[You dial Customer Service. Phone rings.]

Recording: Hello, you have reached the offices of _______ Corporation. Please listen to all of the following, none of which will apply to you. We need time.

[Long list of options follows. None of it applies to you.]

Now that you've listened to all that, press 2.

[You press 2. Phone rings again. Recording answers again.]

Recording: We are currently using COVID-19 as an excuse to offer poor service. For that reason, you are going to wait on hold for a long time until talking to you suits our convenience. We know your time is just as valuable to you as ours is to us, but we ignore that. You want something from us, which means we have you over a barrel. We make you wait because the longer we make you wait, the greater the chance you'll go away on your own and we won't have to deal with whatever you're calling about.

To increase the chances that you'll hang up on your own, while you are waiting, we are going to make it impossible for you to do your own work! We are going to play a very poorly reproduced snipped of crappy anodyne music over and over and over again until it burns its way into your musically-sensitive brain. As a consequence, the tune will occur to you randomly as you go about your life over the next four days. There will be nothing you can do about it.

[Music starts to play and plays over and over again.]

[After many minutes, music fades, and there's a click, at which you get your hopes up. But it's the...]

Recording: Thank you for waiting, and now we pretend to apologize for our convenience. We're busy helping other people who mean more to us than you do. But now, while we've got you held captive against your will, we're going to play some gratuitous commercials for our services into your ear! Ignoring the obvious fact that you're already our customer. These are going to be irritating and utterly irrelevant to you, to your life, your health, and your increasingly miserable existence, plus they will make it even harder for you to work while you're waiting. We don't care. A consultant told us to do this. He used the word "optimizing," and that was good enough for us.

[Commercials begin to play and continue for several minutes. You let them assault your brain with the fatalism of a prisoner enduring some slow, wearing sort of torture. Just as you are beginning to think pre-suicidal thoughts about the meaningless and futility of continuing to live, the same music comes back on.]

[Music plays over and over again.]

[Music fades again, and there's a click again. Like some sort of Pavlovian dog, you get your hopes up again even though you know better.]

Recording: Hello? Hello? Ha, just kidding, it's still a recording. Still on the line? Well, we're still helping other people who are way more important to us than you are. We would have hoped you'd get that message by now, but evidently you're obstinate. The consultant told us about people like you. When you've had enough of our excellent caller service, you can press eight and leave us a message. We will never respond to that message. We'll say it's because of COVID-19 and that none of this is our fault. Really, though, it has to do with the fact that providing phone service is not a profit-generator for our ownership. In fact, we lose money on it, so the more of you we can make go away, the better.

[Music comes back on and plays over and over again.]

[There's that click again, and you think, ah, no, I'm not falling for that again. Fool me once. Er, twice. But this time, there's a pause, during which you hear the desolate sound of disembodied electronic emptiness, the sound of cavernous endless space that doesn't actually exist, and then...

[A human voice answers! Could it be the recording again? No, it's a real human voice! The effect on you is like the effect on a prisoner in solitary confinement whose cell door has swung open, letting in sunshine and fresh air for the first time in days.]

Human voice, in unidentifiable foreign accent: Good afternoon and thank you for calling ______ , where our call-in service is the best in America and your every need is our top priority. That's what we say—actually that's just scripted boilerplate verbiage, totally meaningless. This is "Doris" and I'm here to shine the light of our corporate power and benevolence on you while we taunt the poor dumb saps we have waiting on other lines.

You: Hello Doris, this is—

Doris: Sorry, can I put you on hold for just one minute?

You: What? No, I've been holding for quite a long time now and—

Doris: Thank you. Just one short minute, very short. Just kidding! That's just what we say. By the way, sometimes when we put people on hold, they get cut off. But...

You: Please don't put me on hold.

Doris: ...But if you get cut off, it's no problem. You can just call us right back!

[Click sound. And...]

[Dial tone.]

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The second edition of old friend Bruce Barnbaum's The Essence of Photography is just out. Bruce wrote for Photo Techniques when I was Editor. I always enjoy his insights into the art and craft, even if his technique isn't the same as mine. I still learn. Mastery is fun to read about.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of The Essence of Photography at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dale Fryar: "Quite possibly your best and most relatable post ever."

Kevin Crosado: "You forgot the half hour of 'Expected wait time less than one minute.'"

Kirk: "Were you here, in my office, just last Monday? Did you overhear my phone call (set to 'speaker phone') as I attempted to make contact with any living organism at the IRS? Because I think you have captured the four hour (yes! four hour) hold time, complete with the same canned music. At the end of four hours there was a garbled message and then the phone clicked off and I was back to dial tone.

"I knew I could go two different ways. Indescribable rage or total capitulation. My better half suggested I take the second course for my mental health's sake. I gave up completely, dropped a check big enough to pay for a new car into an envelope and tottered off to the Post Office to send it along certified mail. It was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. I'm almost certain they will lose this check (again) and we'll start all over. ARGH."

Mike replies: I'm so sorry. That sounds acutely miserable.

Mark Sampson: "You've just written the story of my last two days. I had that experience with no less than five organizations (who shall remain nameless) and I'm almost done, with some success. Remember that corporations have only two goals: 1.) enhanced shareholder value and 2.) increased executive compensation. Providing service advances neither of those. Don't forget to fill out the online survey when you're done, and give them five stars!"

Will: "I had a very similar experience calling my airline this Summer, to address problems with a flight that (at the time of the call) was 14–12 hours away. Same resolution, same overall structure.

"One key difference: instead of hold music, complete dead utter silence. I’d never encountered that before, and it seemed a novel ploy to get you to hang up because it felt like a technical problem (the silence between recordings lasted ten minutes, give or take, each time). I was better able to get stuff done, but I’m not sure I’d choose silence if I could. The feeling of isolation was actually chilling. 'Actively listening' for hours to a dead line, it turns out, is utterly unnerving."

Mike replies: Applecare provides silence as an option, and I much prefer it. It means I can work, and just leave the phone on speaker sitting next time. When they come on, I can break and go back to the call.

But then, I never prefer to listen to bad music. My theory about that is that some people are simply not sensitive to music because they have no aptitude for it, and to them, any music is just pleasant noise. To me, bad music playing everywhere is soul-pollution. When I was a young teenager working in a pharmacy, I found I could identify songs on the PA just from the baselines, which was often all I could hear. When I mentioned this to various co-workers, none of them were aware of listening to anything over the PA at all. But I couldn't ignore it.

Bill Tyler: "Recently, a few customer-friendly companies have offered to call back when the wait time is up, rather than keeping me on the line for an hour. It's worked out rather well. I wish it weren't the exception."

RayC (partial comment): "I've certainly experienced this but I've also found that the phone is no longer the best avenue for support. I had a new inexpensive lens develop a focus issue. Small company/importer of a Chinese lens. My expectations for resolution were low but I sent an email to support and got a response in four hours! With an RMA number! Two weeks in the shop and free return shipping and the lens was back and working flawlessly."

Wayne Bruzek: "That had to be a cable provider!"

Mike replies: Good guess. Actually I started writing that post while going through the menus and being put on hold at my doctor's office. But they actually gave me an early appointment only the next day (I had a hemangioma I thought might be cancerous) and I had a pleasant visit with my doctor (who is very good) and got all my issues resolved. So I can't really complain about the experience that inspired this post, although, like all of us, I've had some other experiences that were pretty bad.

Comments

[Thomas Walsh]

You nailed it, Mike.

[Kodachromeguy]

Hmmm, sounds like genuine "capitalism." You know, deregulation carried to its extreme. Customer service? Who cares about that? Look forward to more of this in the upcoming years.

[Kye Wood]

You and I would pay more for the product made and supported in our own country. But you and I are in the absolute minority.

Most folk are shortsighted. Cheap. And too poorly raised and educated to realise that when you act in pure self interest, the world gets a little bit worse. Multiply that by a few billion and we all end up here.

Can't fight City Hall Mike. Or the consequences of greed unabated. Not if you want to stay sane and happy.

Might be time for some fresh air and sunshine and a belly rub for your lovely dog.

[James Bullard]

They learned that from tech companies' "help" & "contact us" menus. I don't know how many times I have been run around Robin Hood's Barn 15 times trying to get a question answered only to end up where I started. They all do it. The intent is to keep you from bothering any of the humans by enmeshing you in a web of computer responses that avoid answering until you give up and go away, which you did.

[James]

I experienced something merciful, compared to Kirk's experience. Calling the IRS, I went through a phone tree for about 5 minutes, and was told "due to high call volume, we are not processing that kind of request at this time."

[Bill Bresler]

You tried to call an airline, didn't you?

[JimH]

Almost daily, Karen and I have this conversation about how all the systems around us are falling apart. Customer service has become a cost center to be outsourced to people who, as you note, have been trained to frustrate you into submission.
Yesterday I went through that with Network Solutions, my web and email hosting service, which has again changed their systems causing me perhaps 3 days of work to fix. Their tech person could barely speak English - obviously he had not been to the school in Bangalore where they teach them how to speak without an unintelligible accent - and after I complained about the lack of a work-around on their part, he put me on "infinite hold."
Today Karen had a similar problem with the online pharmacy (OptumRX) she uses. It will not provide the name-brand drug she must have for her glaucoma without drama. The order they supposedly entered yesterday disappeared - only discovered by accessing the credit card online. She initiated another order. Let's see what happens now.
And today, it took almost an hour to get an answer as to why after 4 years my Frontier landline and DSL bill increased by 50%. Turns out they added services I did not order. Tomorrow they will try to talk me out of. cancelling the whole thing, I bet.
All this reminds me of a foul-mouthed salesman I worked with 50 years ago. He used to say he used the "4F" method of sales:
Find 'em, Finger 'em, F**** 'em and Forget 'em.
Don't it seem that is the motto of many companies we have to deal with.
(Apologies for being so crude, Mike, but it's one of those days....). Feel free to delete the post, but it sure did feel good to vent!

[Dave Pawson]

In the UK there is a web site that offers 'short cuts' past the selections, to get to a human? Is there similar in the US?
For us, many use the '0' selection to bypass the call system.

[Pak WAN]

Here an alternative: would you rather have a chat with a robot first (who could say solve 40% of all problems), and then only then perhaps escalate to a human? I probably would not replace all forms of human contact with a robot but would it have helped in your case?

Pak

[Thomas Mc Cann]

Lucky you, you get a phone number. Many sites now don't offer that or an email address in some cases. I got a text from my hospital reminding me of an upcoming appointment. I needed some clarification but the text says 'We don't accept replies to his message' Took me 30 minutes of digging to make contact.

[RayC]

I've certainly experienced this but I've also found that the phone is no longer the best avenue for support. I had a new inexpensive lens develop a focus issue. Small company/importer of a Chinese lens. My expectations for resolution were low but I sent an email to support and got a response in four hours! With an RMA number! Two weeks in the shop and free return shipping and the lens was back and working flawlessly. This is a photo example of one of several warranty issues in Covid times. Sometime the email has led to a call from customer service for 1:1 resolution from someone who clearly knew the product. I found it refreshing and given that none of these were urgent very easy to work with.

My interactions with the IRS, well, not so good. I just got a form letter saying "one of my calculations" in "this range of the w2" was wrong and to send them money. I use computer based tax software so it seems unlikely the calculation was wrong, but given that the amount asked for was not Kirk's car level payment but "merely" a fancy dinner out for two, I paid online - no "we never received your payment" that way - screen shots in the tax folder.

[Ben]

"I attempted to make contact with any living organism at the IRS"

If only there were any living organisms at the IRS...

[Daniel]

"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed".

Ever ask "When did they change"?

I do and no one ever knows. Or even knows what was changed.

[Kenneth Wajda]

Whenever I hear, "Listen carefully as our menu items have changed," I want to scream, "Who's changing all the menu items?" And "No, they're not changed, you're just trying to trick me into paying attention!"

And whenever they say, "This call may be recorded for quality purposes," I will often say that same line to the operator who answers my call. Gets better results, I find! :-)

[Andrew J.]

Excellent description. And mind you it isn't a typical US problem, it is global. Same method used in my small european country. Made me laugh, well sort of a forced laugh.

[Speed]

Many years ago I worked in tech support fielding customer calls.

What kind of device are you using? What is it called? What do you use it for?

We don't make anything called a (.......) Do you have a model number? No. Serial number? No. How do you use it? We don't make anything that does that. How long have you had it? Don't remember. Where did you buy it? Flea Market.

I'm sorry. I can't help you.

Then THEY get mad.

[Stan B.]

My wife was fond of saying I was featured on every phone call ever "taped for training purposes."

[Aaron]

I don't understand why they play that annoying music. Why not relaxing nature sounds--waterfalls, thunderstorms, night sounds? Wouldn't it increase the odds that callers are a little less annoyed by the time they get to talk to someone?

Actually, on second thought, never mind. Leave the nature sounds alone. I don't want to go to an actual waterfall and then have that long wait on the phone come to mind.

[Bob Rosinsky]

Sorry Mike, I couldn't get through your post. Oh, you're a great writer, but after reading a few paragraphs, my blood pressure approached boiling point. I've spent nearly five hours this week on hold and probably another couple hours navigating nested menu options that ultimately resulted in zero satisfaction. ... The mere thought of having to call an 800 number for customer support makes me cringe.

[Cateto/Jose]

Fantastic post, Mike. And sadly I guess 100% of us have felt exactly the same as you in this case.

[Timothy Auger]

All totally and utterly true. Internationally applicable. I write this as someone with one foot in the UK and the other in Singapore. Just the same. But now with Covid as a 'reason', my doctor's practice is playing the same game. Don't mention my broadband provider. Apple and Adobe are pretty bad. It makes you tired. I suppose that this obstructionism is a disincentive to people wanting to call in: if they employed more staff on the phones, it would simply mean that more people would phone in, and the 'problem' would be replicated on a larger scale.

[KeithB]

You forgot the boiler plate "I can help you with that*" which seems to be used by almost every call center.

*Whether than can or not.

[Gordon R. Brown]

Mike, you left out "Please listen carefully, as our options have recently changed.”

Someone must be in charge of changing them every week.

[Zyni Moë]

If you want both to have plentiful cheap things and services and to pay humans reasonable wages then this is what you will need to accept. Would be nice to have vast army of very poorly-paid servants (or, well, I should not say slaves, but yes, slaves) who will assist you and this is what, if you had money, you had in 1900 and perhaps into the 1950s and beyond. Today, well, people in first-world countries are expensive so you can afford less of their time, and this is a good thing.

[Ramón Acosta]

Mike, take a look at this:

https://youtu.be/mQ8P4DNQA90

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Unwanted_Song

I listened to most of it. And found it funny.

[Marc]

You know whats worst?
If you're also a long time customer of a company that spoiled you with their excellent customer service. In my case, its icetrikes.co and like a member of the Bentrider forum wrote a few years back: "If there is a company with better customer service than ICE Trikes, I don't need it." Their German/EU importer (Iceletta) is even trying to top them.

And then you try to deal with any other company, and its a complete customer service disaster. Actually, if I encouter the usual bad customer service, I'll never buy from that company again.