Customer Service in America

More and more companies are converting their customer service phone lines to an automated voice recognition system. When you call a customer service line you are now quite likely to encounter a recording which asks you say “yes” or “no” in response to its prompts instead of pressing a key on your phone's keypad. These systems are especially disconcerting to me because my voice is pretty much a monotone and a little hoarse due to my allergies. Most of the time I am easy to get along with but I get pretty frustrated when trying to deal with a recording that keeps saying over and over “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that, please repeat”.  Most of these voice recognition systems are so inflexible that you are left with no options at all if the system doesn’t understand you. Most of them don’t give you the option of pressing a button to bypass the automated system and talk to a person. Once in awhile pressing zero will take you to a customer service rep. But, as more consumers learn the trick of pressing zero to bypass an automated system many companies are having their programmers take this out of their software. One company I recently encountered even switched their bypass number to the number nine.

This recent trend to voice recognition customer service has caused an aberration in my conduct as a human being. I now find myself swearing at these recordings. Mind you I have never sworn at a human customer service representative in my life, no matter how rude or incompetent they were. This includes the heavily accented “Jeffs” and “Susans” from Bangalore. I continue to be amused by the practice of the Indian customer service centers that think just because they use an American name we will be able to understand them perfectly no matter how heavy their accent. I usually just hang up on these people. But I digress; back to the subject at hand - my swearing at voice recognition customer service recordings. The first instance of this was a little less than two years ago when I had to call the Social Security administration to inform them that my mother had passed away and to stop sending her check. After what seemed an eternity trying to get the recorded voice on the other end of the line to understand me I shouted “you dip#*%$” and hung up. Even at such a trying time this brought chuckles from family members that were in the next room listening to me try to deal with a recording that had no ability at all to understand what I was saying.

Now most people would forgive my behavior as a one time aberration during a stressful situation. But my frustration with these voice recognition recordings has grown exponentially  and my vocal tirades have become embarrassing to me even though there is usually no one else present when I look straight at the telephone receiver, turn red with rage as the veins on my forehead pop out and launch into a tirade that would make the saltiest sailor cringe.

The current state of customer service in the country is most likely the underlying cause of my swearing at recordings. As technology has progressed there has been an ever growing trend in America to make customers responsible for their own customer service. There are now several generations that have no idea what it is like to have someone pump your gas and clean your windshield for you. I doubt that anyone under forty has an inkling of just what a telephone operator is. One particular annoying trend is the current movement by big box stores and most grocery market chains to have customers check out and bag their own purchases. This is much in evidence in stores like the Wal-Mart store at The Strip. Since they have installed the self-checkout machines Wal-Mart has cut down on the number of cashiers to the point where I usually do use the self-checkout lane just because there are far too many people standing in line in front of me. Our local Acme store has a very irritating self-checkout system where if you don’t correctly place your scanned items on the bagging area the machine in a recorded voice pretty much yells at you and tells you to place your items in the bagging area. I am so upset with this system that I am on the verge of yelling back at it. But, instead I try to do most of my shopping elsewhere. Years ago I could walk into Citizens Savings and be greeted by name by a friendly and helpful teller. And quite often I would see one of the tellers on the street and they would greet me by name as though we were friends. Now that  Citizens has been swallowed up by First Merit I am usually met by unfriendly tellers who seem irritated that I would take up their time with my mundane banking needs. This is probably by design because it has had the effect where I now avoid going inside my local branch of First Merit and instead do most of my banking at the ATM and online. I have seen some reports that a few banks are actually thinking of charging customers a fee to have a teller assist them.

An ever increasing number of businesses now are encouraging you to place your order online for you to pick up. Papa John’s has an online ordering system that actually works reasonably well. But just try to get some help from an online ordering system; invariably you are directed to the FAQ’s (frequently asked questions) page to wade through a myriad of answers that the company hopes will avoid any direct contact between you and one of their human employees.

Customer service in America has gotten to the point where there is very little interaction between the customer and actual human beings interested in providing service to customers. And I am pretty sure that is the main reason I take out my frustrations by swearing at automated customer service recordings. But damn it anyhow, I am a human being and I deserve to be treated like one.