Admin
04-28-2005, 10:43 PM
It seems that customer service in any and all industries is dying very quickly. Every business phone I have called in the last three weeks is answered by a machine. The machine normally tells you how important your call is and then proceeds to ask you a series of questions that require you to respond by touching a number on your phone.
Am I the only one in the United States that finds this annoying?
After spending four or five minutes touching one number after another, answering questions that have nothing to do with the issues regarding your call and your hope of reaching the person you intended to call, is then answered by another machine! This message again tells you how important your call is and explains that the person you are trying to reach is on an extended leave of absence, cataloging native insects in the Likouala region of the Congo, while contemplating middle age and the effects of eucalyptus gel on cellulite.
The message then continues to advise you that this person’s responsibilities have been assumed by a most conscientious youngster recruited from the ginger root collectors of eastern Kentucky, who happens to be a volunteer for the “save the earthworms foundation” and instructs you to punch in a three digit code that will connect you to this person while thoughtfully giving you his name just in case this state of the art system fails to connect.
You then dial the three digit number which begins to ring rapidly and so loudly that you have to pull the phone away from your ear to prevent further inner ear damage. On the twenty third ring the ginger collector’s voice announces that he will be right with you, and asks you to hold for just a few moments. Then another delightful thing happens! You are immediately transported in time back to 1972 into the middle of a live concert by non other than Helen Reddy singing “I am Woman, Hear me Roar”. Please, someone...find the original and all copies of this tune and schedule a nationally televised event where piles of the recordings are destroyed with clever systems which will delight and humor the masses.
Finally after suffering through the song which makes office workers throughout Texas leap from their desk and run out of their buildings screaming “NO MAS” you are again transported back in time to the most famous of all tunes by Slim Whitman, “Indian Love Call” known to make prairie dogs regurgitate in volumes that completely seal the exits from their burrows and explode the skulls of Martians as witnessed in the documentary “Mars Attacks” (1996), only to be connected to the original message once again asking your shoe size and what you had for lunch. Now gleefully armed with the secret three digit code you avoid much of the nonsense and go directly to the savior of earthworms’ private extension, where you hear the following...
“Please leave your name and number and maybe I’ll call you back when I have absolutely nothing else with which to occupy my time”.
Answering machines for companies should be illegal. Those cheapskate organizations found to inflict pain upon their customers with these dastardly devices, with who refuse to hire a personable live and warm body should be flogged and fined an amount twice that of last years annual gross revenue.
Music or should I call it Muzak on hold should be deemed as anti-American and treated no more leniently than Saddam Hussein’s personal hat-maker and pedicurist. The audio assault inflicted by those who think we are interested in revisiting albums recorded by “Losers of the 70’s” is inhumane, and those subjected to it should be able to collect twice their annual earnings for their pain and suffering, and allowed visits from the United Nations bearing coupons for discounts on diesel at 7-11’s nationwide.
What in the name of Jack Nicholson are these companies trying to accomplish? I find the recorded messages to be an assault on the intellect of those wishing to communicate with another person and am outraged by those in a position to assume their product or service is better represented by a machine. I have however noticed that the same companies have sales departments that answer their phones on the first ring, ever eager to please you with whichever product you wish to purchase. Some of these companies’ sales departments have not yet figured out how to put you, the customer with a problem, back in to the system meant to aggravate you to the point of forgetting your problem and writing an article about telephone messaging machinery. It seems that the more expensive the item these companies are selling, the more adapt they are in the recirculation of your call.
Ok... I have a plan. If everyone in America would do the following for two days, we collectively could stamp out telephone recorded answering systems forever. We simply live through the latest recordings, press all the keys they request and recycle back to the original message five times. This will tie up their phone lines for a minimum of 20 minutes. While the bozo you want to speak with, is sitting at his desk, listening to his personal message telling you that he is away from his desk visiting the Vatican, and chuckling under his breath at the obvious aggravation he is inflicting upon you, wait for the tone and leave the following message...
“I refuse to do business with your company until your phone is answered by a real human, who will not put me on hold, and treats me with the respect any customer deserves.”
What do you think? Let’s shoot for next Tuesday!
(for your listening pleasure I have attached a audio sample of “Indian Love Call”)
http://www.cmt.com/shared/droplets/util/track_sample.asx?trackId=8034956
by Tom Robertson
Editor,Expediterworld
Am I the only one in the United States that finds this annoying?
After spending four or five minutes touching one number after another, answering questions that have nothing to do with the issues regarding your call and your hope of reaching the person you intended to call, is then answered by another machine! This message again tells you how important your call is and explains that the person you are trying to reach is on an extended leave of absence, cataloging native insects in the Likouala region of the Congo, while contemplating middle age and the effects of eucalyptus gel on cellulite.
The message then continues to advise you that this person’s responsibilities have been assumed by a most conscientious youngster recruited from the ginger root collectors of eastern Kentucky, who happens to be a volunteer for the “save the earthworms foundation” and instructs you to punch in a three digit code that will connect you to this person while thoughtfully giving you his name just in case this state of the art system fails to connect.
You then dial the three digit number which begins to ring rapidly and so loudly that you have to pull the phone away from your ear to prevent further inner ear damage. On the twenty third ring the ginger collector’s voice announces that he will be right with you, and asks you to hold for just a few moments. Then another delightful thing happens! You are immediately transported in time back to 1972 into the middle of a live concert by non other than Helen Reddy singing “I am Woman, Hear me Roar”. Please, someone...find the original and all copies of this tune and schedule a nationally televised event where piles of the recordings are destroyed with clever systems which will delight and humor the masses.
Finally after suffering through the song which makes office workers throughout Texas leap from their desk and run out of their buildings screaming “NO MAS” you are again transported back in time to the most famous of all tunes by Slim Whitman, “Indian Love Call” known to make prairie dogs regurgitate in volumes that completely seal the exits from their burrows and explode the skulls of Martians as witnessed in the documentary “Mars Attacks” (1996), only to be connected to the original message once again asking your shoe size and what you had for lunch. Now gleefully armed with the secret three digit code you avoid much of the nonsense and go directly to the savior of earthworms’ private extension, where you hear the following...
“Please leave your name and number and maybe I’ll call you back when I have absolutely nothing else with which to occupy my time”.
Answering machines for companies should be illegal. Those cheapskate organizations found to inflict pain upon their customers with these dastardly devices, with who refuse to hire a personable live and warm body should be flogged and fined an amount twice that of last years annual gross revenue.
Music or should I call it Muzak on hold should be deemed as anti-American and treated no more leniently than Saddam Hussein’s personal hat-maker and pedicurist. The audio assault inflicted by those who think we are interested in revisiting albums recorded by “Losers of the 70’s” is inhumane, and those subjected to it should be able to collect twice their annual earnings for their pain and suffering, and allowed visits from the United Nations bearing coupons for discounts on diesel at 7-11’s nationwide.
What in the name of Jack Nicholson are these companies trying to accomplish? I find the recorded messages to be an assault on the intellect of those wishing to communicate with another person and am outraged by those in a position to assume their product or service is better represented by a machine. I have however noticed that the same companies have sales departments that answer their phones on the first ring, ever eager to please you with whichever product you wish to purchase. Some of these companies’ sales departments have not yet figured out how to put you, the customer with a problem, back in to the system meant to aggravate you to the point of forgetting your problem and writing an article about telephone messaging machinery. It seems that the more expensive the item these companies are selling, the more adapt they are in the recirculation of your call.
Ok... I have a plan. If everyone in America would do the following for two days, we collectively could stamp out telephone recorded answering systems forever. We simply live through the latest recordings, press all the keys they request and recycle back to the original message five times. This will tie up their phone lines for a minimum of 20 minutes. While the bozo you want to speak with, is sitting at his desk, listening to his personal message telling you that he is away from his desk visiting the Vatican, and chuckling under his breath at the obvious aggravation he is inflicting upon you, wait for the tone and leave the following message...
“I refuse to do business with your company until your phone is answered by a real human, who will not put me on hold, and treats me with the respect any customer deserves.”
What do you think? Let’s shoot for next Tuesday!
(for your listening pleasure I have attached a audio sample of “Indian Love Call”)
http://www.cmt.com/shared/droplets/util/track_sample.asx?trackId=8034956
by Tom Robertson
Editor,Expediterworld