Does anyone hate to use the telephone as much as I do, to contact businesses?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Is it just me?

I find the process of calling any kind of major business, company, hospital, or government agency infuriating and tedious. One big reason is for that is having to go through tiers of operators and repeat information to them, such as pronouncing and spelling my name which is a difficult one. Even spelling the name is difficult because many letters sound similar to others. Particularly, consonants that vary only in high pitched frequencies can be indistinguishable, so I have to say “S as in Sam”, “C as in Cat”, “V as in Victor”, and so forth. ( I wish one of the old World War II word alphabets had come into use at least among telephone operators; then I’d be able to simply rattle out “Sierra Charlie Otto Yankee…”.

When I was in Germany, a long time ago, full time phone operators did use something like that. After the first few weeks, my family back home asked me to call home collect rather than write letters, and I had to go to the post office to do that. I will never forget the sound of the operator putting the call through with my name “Siegfried Caesar Otto Ypsilon…”. Straightforward and easy! Sigh…those Germans are so efficient.

So…there’s that. But wait, there’s more. These days, many if not most big offices have voice recognition systems. If you’re lucky, as the system’s soulless voice rattles off the choices, you can just punch in the number in the same order as they listed the options, so if it tells you to answer “yes” or “no”, you can punch in 1 or 2 respectively. It’s hard enough to spell my name to a human being over the phone; now with these I find I keep having to repeat “YES”, “NO”, “BILLING”, “ADD SERVICES”. Usually I don’t make myself understood the first time around, so then here we go again: “YES!!”, “NO!!”, “BILLING!!”…and so on. I’m partly to blame for that. I’ve been told I’m a low talker.

Another thing is that this isn’t my favorite way to acquire information. I don’t like to be read to; when I was on a jury a few years ago, I was impatient while the judge read the law to us – partly also because the judge kept falling asleep while he read aloud, as he had been up most of the night going over the case. (The Law must be a most harsh mistress indeed). I imagine this is a holdover from long ago when many jurors truly illiterate. I kept saying to myself, “let’s get on with it!” I knew it wouldn’t have been practical for a jury of 12 people, but I wished they could have just handed us out a pdf of the relevant section and had us read it to ourselves. Then we could have been adminstered a short test to assure our understanding. I’m not so sure that would be so impractical at that, considering that it took the Court half a day just to do this.

Is it any wonder I would rather just go online and send an email, or download instructions and information that I can save on my computer, or print out and read?

Who’s with me?

2

I dislike being put on hold for long periods of time. I also dislike it when the person I am talking to does not know the answers to my questions, or does not seem to understand what I am asking.

So, yes, I too dislike making business calls.

3

I constantly try to do things over e-mail. I always look for e-mail addys. In e-mail I can calmly explain my situation and they can get back to me when they have an answer, instead of transferring my call all over the place. I’m with you.

4

Yes. I treat phone calls as a last resort, which I’m sure suits the businesses just fine. Unfortunately, many of them don’t seem to have fully made the connection between “put the info customers need online” and “fewer calls.” In addition to the problems already mentioned, I particularly detest the end-of-call upsell pitch, growing more common, usually hawking some phenomenally overpriced “credit life insurance” or similar crap.

Which is especially fun when you’re at work and your cube neighbors think you’re barking out random words because you’ve suffered a stroke.

5

I really hate those voice recognition system. Given their utter unreliability, I don’t see how that can possibly be an improvement over simply asking the customer to enter the information over the keypad. The customer ends up getting irritated, and the call ends up taking longer, costing the company more money. Who is the winner here?

The worst offenders are the ones that simply ask “Tell me what are you calling about today.” without giving me the options that are recognized by the system. That almost never works right.

6

I hate using phones period.

7

I hate dealing with phone trees. Especially the ones that are not well thought out, and don’t give me enough information to choose the right option.

I have to admit, though, that when I’ve dealt with Charter’s voice recognition tech support, I’ve had great success, and it was actually easy to get through. The voice actress they used has a clear, unaccented, pleasant voice. The options were well-chosen. The system is quick and easy to use. However, I admit that I use this in the privacy of my own home, in my own room, and the only beings who are likely to listen to my occasional shouts of choices are the cats, who think I’m weird anyway, and my husband, who likewise thinks that I’m weird.

8

Me too. When I was a little kid, I used to run and hide every time the phone rang.

9

Another phone hater. Alas, my father died last year after racking up over $50,000 in medical expenses in Mexico, which my mother had to pay in cash. Now I am trying to get the money back for her, and I spend half my life on the phone with Aetna - late at night and paying a fortune for the privilege, since I’m in Indonesia. A short call lasts half an hour, and an hour is more typical. I call them once or twice a week these days.

I hate, hate, HATE the phone.

(Oh, and I hate insurance companies too.)

10

I too am annoyed with the process. One of the things that annoys me most is when the automated menu option says: In order to serve you better, please enter your customer ID using the touch tone pad. Then, when you get a customer service person, they ask you for your customer ID. There is no good reason for this.

11

As a phone operative for a large business, I feel I should point out that with most companies, if you want to know something, the quickest way to find out is to call rather than e-mail. This is because e-mails have to be processed and allocated before they can be replied to, and once the reply is written this has to be checked and signed off by a manager. This means it will probably take at least 24 hours to get a response by e-mail, and that’s for a very efficient company and a simple query.

I can certainly agree with the hatred of phone trees and voice recognition - my company does not employ these at all, you ring and speak to a real person immediately, typically within 10 seconds of dialling. It is then rare to be transferred to another person more than once to get your questions answered. However, we are very much the exception rather than the rule.

We do also put virtually all the information clients require on our website, and I (and most of my colleagues) know the phonetic alphabet. It’s always amusing when clients make up their own phonetic alphabets, particularly when they use non-helpful words (e.g. “B for Barry” - could easily be C for carry, P for parry etc.). If you really want to mess with someone, you can always go for “P for pneumonia” or “H for honest” :).

12

I much prefer using the phone for business because it’s harder to ignore. If I send an e-mail, it might as well just vanish into the ether for all I feel like it’s being answered.

13

I spent 16 hours on hold trying to get a landline through Verizon. I was told that I should expect that since I live in the middle of nowhere. Please note, I was calling the main Verizon number, they had no idea where I was calling from. Any phone company that doesn’t understand how hard it is to be on hold when you don’t have a phone, needs serious help. I can’t tell you how many different ways I tried to get through their phone tree. Ultimately, the only way I was able to get service was to call their “customers with disabilities” line, since my daughter, technically, has a disability. And the only reason I need a home phone is so my daughters school can contact us.

I’ve since convinced another provider to give me service. The joys of living in the border-boonies is that with enough convincing, I have my choice of phone providers. (Please send a crack addict technician out that I can bribe)

14

I hate calling. Makes me nervous. Couldn’t tell you why. Even calling for pizza is hard.

15

I also hate making phone calls to businesses. I am particularly miffed that doctors offices still don’t have email after all this time, and you can’t even leave a message on their voice mail when their office is closed.

I end up taking half a day off work when I need to make phone calls, because there is no privacy at all at the office and I don’t need my coworkers knowing that much about me.

16

I do too but for a different reason. I generally find people that answer the phone at businesses to be somewhat unfriendly. Which is especially surprising when it’s say the owner of the establishment and not just a punk kid, and you are calling to order something and not just to ask dumb questions.

Strangely though I’m not shy if I have to make calls for work. It’s only if it’s for me personally that I get shy and make other people order the pizza.