Press 1 for this, 2 for that

I hate all those options when you call a customer service line!  I just called my mail order pharmacy to check on a prescription and had to listen to 3 different "Press 1 for. . ." options even though I pressed 0 to get to an operator.  That's so darned frustrating!

I hate the ones where you say something and the computer has to interpret what you said.

I have to agree with You... I wish I could post pictures ,,because Blondie,,( a cartoon in our local paper had a cute one the other day,,Dagwood was on the Phone with (customer ???service),, Thefirst frame was the telephone prompt saying IF at any time You want to talk to a real person "say Real person"  next frame was Dagwood saying Real Person,,,,, Next frame was Dagwood looking bewildered  and the Phone promt saying....." You really didn't think that would work did You//....

I have had more than 3 options happen to me. When I finally get to the person/place I want and get the message: I am either away from my desk or on another line, please leave a message and I will contact you asp.

I do leave a message:

Options and voice mail are not only a waste of MY time,  they are also impersonal and downright rude.

Sometimes I think people are NEVER at their desks or do not want to be bothered to do their job b which is: answering the phone. I HATE voice mail and options and yes, the computerized answering.

sometimes here, when you do not press anything and just hold on and wait to the end, you will get a real person to speask to you..but if they know what its' all about is another hting...

Jeff once got put through to India would oyu believe?  Of course, it was customer services for an airline I htink it was, but of course they would not admit it...the chap hardly could speak English, and had no idea..in the end end Jeff asked for his name, and the chap said 'Graham'...yes,. right....and when he asked where he was, he admitted it was in India...a fat lot of good that was....

My experience is when you do finally get to that person's voice mail, they never return the call.  

I work for a company that does telcom consulting for the hospitality industry and I hear all the time "wow a real live person!" We are not allowed to not answer the phone so unless I am on another call or not at my desk then the call is answered. If you do go to voicemail you can push 0 and have me paged and unless I am out of the building I will be on the phone.

The only time here you have to push anything is if you know the extension to go directly to the person you want to talk to or you can hang on and let it ring through to the console and just ask for whomever you want. This is a huge thing for the bosses since an unaswered call can mean catastrophic losses for clients if they have downed equipment. And a loss for the client usually means the loss of a client and that is severly frowned upon here.

 I do feel the frustration when making calls on behalf of clients to get something back up and running and not being able to get through.

I have never liked voice mail.  When calling my doctors office to refill a prescription there are about 12 steps to go through to get to the prescription line.  Then they give you instructions..."be sure to leave your name, birthday, number of pharmacy, name and dosage of prescription, youngest childs number of teeth, current weather conditions" (lol) and they're gone.  I'm left trying to make sure I give all the required info without a cheat sheet.

Whenever I call an information or support center I always get the guy from Dublin (Ireland, that is) or the Phillipines who cannot speak English.  It's hard enough to communicate with these guys when I cannot speak computer and he cannot speak English.  So frustrating!  If they're going to have a techie helping people from the United States they should at least have that techie be fluent in the United States' language.  JMO

My mother is going to be 84 years old and although she still lives alone, on her own, and is mentally sharp and healthy, she is overwhelmed by trying to make those phone calls.  She often just hangs up!  Change is hard, and especially hard for the elderly.  There has to be a better way.

I wish I could remember what news program I was watching the other day for reference here. They did a story regarding the teleprompts and lack of English skills at customer support centers especially at Dell. Customers are complaining.....You think?   It's hurting their business so guess what? They are moving support centers back to the USA, finding out that people are available to work out of home offices.  Maybe this was on 60 Minutes.  There is a job for thousands of people who could work at home and provide excellent service.  Let's hope the pendulum swings bring needed jobs back to the United States.

 Go straight to zero, press several times,and 9 times out of 10 you'll get a real live human being to answer the phone. Valuable knowledge!!!

Roma_:

I wish I could remember what news program I was watching the other day for reference here. They did a story regarding the teleprompts and lack of English skills at customer support centers especially at Dell. Customers are complaining.....You think?   It's hurting their business so guess what? They are moving support centers back to the USA, finding out that people are available to work out of home offices.  Maybe this was on 60 Minutes.  There is a job for thousands of people who could work at home and provide excellent service.  Let's hope the pendulum swings bring needed jobs back to the United States.

This is basically what I do.  I work from home for a company based in Omaha that provides customer service for a range of clients, two of which are ShopNBC and HSN.  I've been working for them for almost 2 years, but most of that has been as an independent contractor.  They just converted us all from contractor to employee in September.  It doesn't mean much because we don't get benefits, but they do take our taxes out of our paychecks and we don't have to claim we're self-employed.

What really concerns me isn't that CS has been farmed out to foreign countries, but so has medical transcription.  Many of the large hospitals outsource their transcription to India and the Phillipines.  I can't believe a hospital would do this.  Talk about lack of confidentiality!

I don't think I'd worry about the confidentiality of my medical records being sent to the Phillipines or India.  Nobody there would know me from Adam so why would they, or I, care?  I would worry about errors in the terminology though, being transcribed by someone with a foreign tongue.

I receved my mail today and in it was my new credit card. I called the number on it to activate it and got one of thoserecorded computer voices that wanted me to read the whole credit card number to "him".

I tried 3 times, very slowly and speaking very clearly, but evrrytime "he" said he did not understand me. That did it, I kept pushing 0 about 15 times with "him" jabbering right along but finally I got a human being because..I wanted to ask if thehadchanged the old code# from a 6 didgit to a 3 digit and I know I could have never asked "him" and gotten an answer. Believe, I tell the reps (in a nice way) to let their powrers to be knowhow unhappy many people are with their computerized robot customer reps. I know it doesn't do any good but it makes me feel better.

I NEVER give up until I get to talk to a hman being, n matter what or how long it takes me.