Someone to talk to

Aren’t you tired, when calling a large organisation, to have to go through the usual maze of dial-this-for-that only to reach a dead end, after a nerve breaking and frustrating wait-time? Unfortunately big business and automation come at a price and I don’t mean just money.

The pattern is typical to big enterprises that have to provide customer support and cannot, understandably, keep answering the phone and helping millions of users in the old traditional, one-on-one natural manner. But what about the client’s side of the story?

From Orange or Zain in Jordan, to Microsoft, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, HostGator, Amazon and other tech-giants abroad, they all realise they have to provide clients with answers and support. None have yet found a really good way of doing it. Well, perhaps we must give some (moderated) kudos to Amazon for providing an automated phone service that is closer to the ideal thing than most others; it is definitely above average.

Regardless of the result you may or may not obtain by calling an automated phone system, the vast majority of us need to talk to a human being when looking for answers or technical support of any kind. Nothing has yet replaced this kind of time-honoured means of communication and its efficiency.

Again, some automated phone systems are more perfected than others, but globally they would lead you to frustration most of the time, even if someone answers you eventually.

An example on the imperfection side. Last week, I had to call one of the above-mentioned organisations (I will abstain from specifying which), looking for answers to a given problem. After going through the usual dial-this menu that involved not less than nine steps and 15 minutes of waiting, a real person finally answered me. I thought it was my lucky day. Alas, and with all due respect to her ethnicity or mother tongue, which I could not pinpoint, the English accent of the lady was such that I honestly could not understand what she was saying. It was most likely a decentralised call-centre like most big companies sub-contract these days to reduce operating costs.

Whereas many claim to provide a personalised customer service, they just fall short of doing it right. One must admit that the problem is big, given the huge numbers involved and the perfect solution is out of reach for now.

Sometimes, however, the system works alright and you are glad to have had a refined automated phone system to “talk to”. Royal Jordanian for one runs a great voice operated system based on voice recognition and that is a pleasure to use. Microsoft provides a more or less similar system that lets you activate Windows or Office over the phone. It’s a bit long but it is very accurate and it does work.

The most difficult instances are those that involve dial menus that simply do not cover the very case you are calling for and that do not leave room for you to dial a key to talk to a human operator. Understandably no system can cover all cases. Haven’t you ever had a final answer by the automated phone system that simply was “for more information please consult our Q&A pages on our website?” So much for personalised service.

The robot age is upon us that is a certainty. How intelligent these systems may become is another story. Billions have been injected in research in the Artificial Intelligence field since 1990, in Japan more particularly. Twenty-five years on and no tangible results have been felt by the population. Many countries have even cut down their budget for this specific kind of scientific research, Germany and France among others. Could it be a sign that we should go back to the vital human touch after all? I’d love to have someone to talk to and I don’t mind being tagged as being old-fashioned.