Back in the Day… We Talked to Real People

Back in the day, we talked to real people. We talked to them face to face, we talked to them on the phone, and we talked to them whenever we wanted to contact any type of business or company.

Today, we talk to machines and bots. Sometimes we’re not even sure who or what we’re talking to. There are usually some tell-tale signs that there’s not a flesh and blood human on the other end. One of those signs is that you often hear the same recordings over and over. The following are some of the more annoying messages.

Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed

How many times are menus changing? Do they think we memorized the previous menu?

What is the point of all this? If these companies really told us what they thought, their message might go something like this:

Dear caller, we really wish you’d figure out your problems on your own, so we created this ridiculous menu system to keep you busy until you become so frustrated you finally hang up.

We are currently experiencing a high call volume

With some companies, it probably doesn’t matter if you call Monday at 9 am or on a Tuesday at midnight. They’re going to keep this dandy response on the line because they only have one or two actual humans working the phones. Yeah, you will experience high call volume when there’s only one person answering hundreds of calls.

Basically, what they are saying is the following:

We are understaffed and don’t really want to answer your calls anyway, so have fun waiting for hours.

There are times I’ve been on hold so long that by the time someone answers I’m so grateful, I almost start crying. I’m so shocked and have waited so long that I forget why I even called in the first place. Just as I hang up, I remember why I called.

Your call is important to us, please continue to hold

This is possibly the most annoying of all the ear rape we’re forced to endure. If our calls were truly important to these people they would have a live human on the other end, not an infuriating machine. A company should have the decency to at least be honest and record something like the following:

Unless you are spending buttloads of money at our company, your call is not the least bit important to us. Continue to hold if you feel like it. P.S. If you are spending thousands of dollars on products or services, press 1, we’ll answer in a nanosecond.

At the end of this call, you will be given a survey

How annoying is this? How many surveys does a company need to have to figure out that all we want is to have our calls answered in a timely manner by a real person? Apparently, there aren’t enough surveys in the universe for businesses to figure this out.

Instead, we keep getting nonsense like this:

Your feedback is important to us. After this call, you will be directed to a 15-minute survey. This survey is mandatory and must be completed. If you hang up before taking the survey, we will automatically call you back until you finish the survey. We will keep calling, and calling, and calling with more surveys about why you didn’t finish the first survey.

I’m old enough to remember dialing 0 and talking to an operator on the phone. It may be a joke on movies and such, but we really called the operator and asked her what time it was or what the weather was, and she would tell us.

That’s how much times have changed since the 1970s.

Real human interaction. One more thing we’re slowly losing but had plenty of … back in the day.