I posted this video this morning. In it I ask how many times have you been told your call matters to a company or government department you're ringing, only to be put on hold again? Are they just lying to us? And isn't time that they really did value us, and not just say they do, if only by answering the ****** phone?
The transcript is:
I hate being told when I'm hanging on the phone that whoever I'm calling thinks my call is valuable to them. Well, if it is, answer the *** call.
I will let you put your own word or whatever description you like in the blank I left there because I find this deeply irritating and I've recently come across it a lot.
I've happened to have become the administrator of a will, rather against my better judgment, and in the process I've had to phone a lot of organizations to tell them about everything that's going on and you know the drill, it's pretty tedious if you've ever done this job, but it's made so much worse by organisations that keep telling me, “Your call is important to us, we're sorry to keep you waiting”. Or something similar to that, followed by Vivaldi or some other hopeless music.
This is not a chance that this is happening. It's deliberate. One of the worst culprits is HM Revenue and Customs, and they recently admitted that in the last year they had kept people hanging on the telephone for 798 years in total. Now actually, if you value people's time at £20 an hour - and I'm going to suggest you should do that, because it's a bit over minimum wage plus overheads, and therefore what a company would at a minimum be paying somebody to hang on the phone, if you do that - That total time waiting to get through to HMRC is worth £140 million.
They are dumping that cost on to you, me, and everybody else who has to listen to them saying our call is valuable. Well, it isn't valuable, is it? If you don't mind me expressing my frustration. Because if it was, you'd invest the £140 million in your organisation so you had enough people to answer the phone when people wanted to talk to you.
So, what is the real problem here?
First of all, profit is being put before you, me, and everyone else who needs a service. Profit of a commercial organisation, because some of the companies I've had to call are commercial organisations, or cost saving by a government who doesn't really care about people and treats them with indifference, in the case of HM Revenue and Customs. And that, I'm afraid, is the state of the modern political attitude in government towards people. So, this is a matter of indifference by the organisation that you are trying to call.
But there's something more to that. It is actually that they want to basically avoid contact with you. It's as if every large organisation, your bank, your utility company, whoever it might be, wants to have the least possible contact that they can with you as a human being.
Please do the job for us.
Fill in your meter readings.
Please do your banking online, making you do the work, not them.
Please request everything on their automated facility.
Please fill in this form.
Please don't talk to us.
If you call us, don't expect help.
All of this is about ignoring the reality that we're dealing with human beings. It's all about saving money. It's all about treating you as an automaton.
Now, it may be possible to do some of these things online, in simple, straightforward cases. I don't deny it. And it may be that they will try to make even more of these things possible when AI, artificial intelligence, becomes better.
But the fact is, I think we're beginning to find the boundary of what technology can do. Because as the National Audit Office noted when they looked at HM Revenue and Customs' failure to answer the phone, people are refusing to use the digital systems. They actually want to speak to human beings because they need that interaction to truly understand the message they're getting.
And a computer can't impart that. And I believe that that is a really important point. We need to actually understand that we as humans need to talk to humans. A large business, government, banks, utility companies, and everybody else needs to recognise that the time has come when computers can do so much, and no more.
And I think we've found the limits. If you really value my call, I think, well answer it. Don't make a false claim.
If you think I'm important to you as a customer, then treat me with respect.
If you want me to pay your taxes, then answer my query because I'm trying to do just that.
But don't tell me to hang on the phone for your convenience, to effect your cost saving at my cost, because if you do, we'll get a breakdown in our relationship.
And we'll get a failure of productivity in the UK whilst vast numbers of people hang on the phone and can't be doing something gainful for society.
This is a crisis for our economy in the making, and it's time big business and government recognised that it's important that they have people on the end of telephones when other people need to talk to them.
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This reminds me of Capitalist Realism, by the late Mark Fisher, in which (on the subject of the call centre experience) he said that corporations are too busy making money to do anything for you, and an article I read called the Myth of Efficiency, since efficiency is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s always more “efficient” to not do something than it is to do it! I’d not thought of waiting on hold as yet another externalising act by businesses and government agencies, but there is seemingly no end to their ingenuity in this regard. They’ll no doubt see it as efficient for themselves to provide the kinds of FAQs that never answer any question you may have, through to the circular “click here to contact us” online ruse (I can vouch here for the lengths businesses go to to stand in the way of registering a Power of Attorney with them, utility and Comms companies especially). Two opposing statements spring to mind: we’re wealthier as a country than ever before… but we just can’t afford what we used to (when we were poorer). If we added up how many hours most adults spend each year with administering utility contracts, mobile phone contracts, internet contracts, insurances and so on, it would be quite staggering I imagine.
Thanks
“Two opposing statements spring to mind: we’re wealthier as a country than ever before… but we just can’t afford what we used to (when we were poorer)”.
I think that hides an implicit assumption. The “we” in that statement is not the citizenry. It is the “little” people, those who aren’t the wealthy elite. It doesn’t include the elite.
The country is indeed wealthier than previously. It’s the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world.The government claims it can’t afford to pay for public services, for public goods. The only logical conclusion is that the elite are sequestering an ever greater share of the country’s resources for their own use. I don’t think this is even particularly contentious. The other day I heard that per capita real wages have not increased since 2007. We’re becoming more like the apocryphal “banana republic”.
For the past few decades the public, myself included (previously), have swallowed the neoliberals lies spewed by government. Nevermind being “woke”, people need to wake up to the fact that they are being consistently, and intentionally, lied to by most of our politicians (perhaps a few are simply deluded – in which case they are not fit for public office). Only then can the we, the “little” people, successfully demand change. I hope I’m not being over optimistic that I can see the stirrings of enlightenment, not least fostered by this blog.
Is it beyond the wit of technology to measure the amount of time an organisation keeps a person waiting beyond say a five minute period and tax them on all the excess waiting time. What a good way of raising tax revenue and making the country more efficient at the same time!
“Please do the job for us”.
How to make money in the 21st century digital world. Tell the public you actually doing it for them, and it is really making life easier for them. Dress it up in digital fluff to make it look like you are providing them instant gratification of wants, and the public will actually believe it.
Meanwhile Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who sold the public Brexit because he knows so much about making money, he must know what he is talking about on everything and anything; has now confessed he didn’t know what he was talking about, but still clearly doesn’t understand: “Brexit sort of unfortunately didn’t turn out as people anticipated because… Brexit was largely about immigration”. No, laddie Brexit was a terrible idea for Britain, as a country on the edge of Europe. Terrible, as a self-inflicted economic act of self-harm; and terrible geopolitics – it confirmed to Putin and Russia that Europe was weak, disunited and falling apart, in 2016. Putin has used that in the subsequent eight years to cause a crisis for Europe, from Finland to Slovenia and Moldova.
Ratcliffe, however believes that: “The country [Britain] was designed for 55 or 60 million people and we’ve got 70 million people”. This is wrong in so many ways it is difficult to know where to start. First, countries are not “designed”; they are not designable, and those who attempt it will create only profound disappointment. Second, the last person to talk like this was Thomas Malthus, and he would have thought 50 million impossible. Ratlcliffe’s 55m is just the sentimentalism of someone placing a cap on what things were like in their rose-tined view of what worked, when they were young; or first made a pile of money. Third, the real crisis, not least for the economy is that Britian has a real demographic crisis of its own. The fertility rate is around 1.5 children per woman, and falling. The replacement rate is 2.1. this is an extinction curve. Britain both needs immigration, and rejects it. These are the facts. Ratcliffe, the Conservatives and Labour are incapable of fixing anything. That is also a fact we refuse to face.
I think you’re facing it.
I am too.
So are others here.
And that gives me hope.
Well said John. The UK needs immigration on a large scale. The ludicrous anti immigration stance of the Tories is both stupid and racist. It panders to the most stupid people in British society.
Although of course, since we’re going to get lots of it, making life as difficult as possible, and as illegal as possible probably suits many Tories or those of a similar mentality since it means they can force themselves unfortunates into the black economy and exploit them. Nice.
And as for labour…..don’t expect them to stand up for the rights of migrants, as that would require them to take a stand on something.
And defend it. Fat chance.
I used to work for a company where we actually implemented a call center. I work in IT. Back in the day you took the first job you could and grabbed it by the…
It’s been dispiriting implementing these systems. Holding the scripts in the database. Template question workflows regardless of context just to name two mindless aspects of it.
I pittied the poor contact center staff whose life was drudgery and often abuse on the phone. On told me that was good, it was when their call rate and time was monitored the job got nasty. You couldn’t give too much time to a call. They had a bar to reach every hour.
Customer satisfaction was a joke but the company cited surveys after calls that “showed” satisfaction. None of the data was available for scrutiny – because of “gdpr” blah blah blah.
When I used to say this is a dead end road I was told I was idealistic. It was almost as if everyone who worked on the project bought the idea that this was progress and only inevitable. Customer contact is old fashioned. But unfortunately the old and the disabled need to speak to a human. Some of the online IT systems have no human interface design to them they are a mish mash of interconnected systems which have a confusing front end. No matter this is “progress”.
Yeah I have a “nice” job but I’ve stopped enjoying it years ago. But it’s a better job than the poor contact center staff – many of whom were far brighter than my well paid managers but started life in the wrong place.
So I get the story from your angle it makes sense. From my angle on the inside it’s a sweatshop and sweatshops are for a failing economy. One without any clear direction or ideas. Prof Danny Dorling makes a better case for the UK as a failing economy – my experience lives up to it.
The UK economy is failing..
Your experience fits with the ‘myth of efficiency’ raised by Mr Willetts. The problem is that ‘efficiency’ (or whatever the proposition demands), is selected from a narrow, defined perspective that delivers, typically ‘profit’, by excluding anything and everything inconvenient that compromises the demanded expectation. It doesn’t matter what the consequences of producing efficiency (profit) actually is; what business has discovered is that it can sell a message vey cheaply that there is no loss of service, by pointing to abstract statistics of the process, and marketing that distortion through PR, and media. The difficulty of the public in challenging a digital world, dominated by the Big Battalions; in the non-digital world gives the ‘myth of efficiency’ a decisive, practically impenetrable advantage. I doubt if this distortion of the world could be achieved so easily in a pre-digital world. I believe the closure of bank branches is merely a standard example of the technique. In a digital world it is possible, very easily to exclude the non-digital objections even from consideration; and shape all debate around the data that proves that (for example) nobody wants to use bank branches, just by making them as difficult, unattractive or even impossible to use. notice that virtually all the banks want to close branches (even ones that make much of their branch oriented policies); this is how the digital world works.
The digital revolution has benefited the creation of cartel and monopoly more than politics alone could ever deliver.
@John Warren – I remember when the rot started for me, pertaining to bank branches. It was back in the early noughties, when I was informed by my employer that I would no longer be receiving a paper wage cheque, but my wages would be automatically sent to my bank account instead. This meant I no longer went to the bank to deposit my cheque, receive the deposit slip (which I kept) etc. I used to enjoy going to the bank, even when there was a queue …which there often was.
The tellers were fantastic, knew their stuff, could help with any issue. They even sorted a problem that had been a bank error …the kind banks don’t make! The bank had recorded a cheque I wrote for £5.13 as £513.00—which overdrew my account. They were able to find the cheque itself while I stood and waited and they verified the mistake—and no, it wasn’t my handwriting at fault. I shudder to think what would happen if that sort of mistake happened digitally now.)
I remember, on the occasions when I still visited the bank afterwards, thinking …wow, it’s not busy in here any more …there is only one teller instead of four. Of course those branches are long gone now.
Thanks
Basically, most organisations have transferred the costs in terms of time, energy and money to the person making the call.
In the good old days, they would have a person answering the phone and then passing you through to the person who might help.
Your call is important, isn’t at all. It’s a pain for us and we want you to go away.
The only hope and it only works in companies which sell things is to go through to sales. They will answer the phone quickly and then hopefully pass you on to the right person.
Unfortunately, this won’t work with HMRC etc
you are a bit unkind to Vivaldi. His music is good when at a concert or even an attentively listened to recording. I agree with every thing else.
“ we are experiencing unusually high call volumes” should be : we have not bothered to employ sufficient people to answer you call.
Right time, right place I am a big fan of Vivaldi.
And it’s funny how the “unusually” high call volumes seem to happen all the time. You’d think that after a while they’d realise that it isn’t unusual at all, that in fact high call volumes are the norm. But they never seem to.
Agreed
Yes yes yes, but what can we little people actually DO about it? It drives me mad – last week 45 minutes on hold to the NHS for a call I simply HAD to complete. Stop using auto-checkouts at the supermarket; insist on paying with cash when you buy petrol, etc etc. Ideas please…
Complain, loud and often
Complain? It seems like I spend half my life complaining, I’m worn out, nothing works, I want a life. Discussing and agreeing is only the first step, but without a proferred solution, is little better than hanging on the phone waiting for a reply! Enough discussion (we all agree) what is to be done?
Ok, you get me
I don’t know
Mr Robson,
Give your MP a hard time about it. Write to him/her. Keep writing. Persist. Write to the candidates in your constituency. Give them all a hard time about it. Persist. Demand they tell you what they are going to do. Find others who feel the same, to do the same.
Democracy is hard work, and works badly even then. It is fragile, if it isn’t constantly nurtured. In Britain it is misused and exploited by the wrong people (Parties are largely inevitable agglomerations of all the wrong people). We know this because too many of the wrong people have taken over the political parties; and tell us, without blinking that they can be trusted; when we can all see – they can’t be trusted,
I so agree, this “your call is important to us” rings rather hollow. Most of the work of so many so called service companies has been outsourced to the customer and little sense of service now remains. How many times do you hear people complaining about the amount of time they spend on “life admin”?!
In addition to this is the time wasted from the so called “free market” in things where there should be one efficient and fairly priced supplier….power, train tickets etc. The shop around culture wastes soo much time and resources!!
I recently recieved a renewal for my home insurance – as usual it was 30% more than last year so I go through the whole charade of calling….being told to go online, hanging on, then explaining very politely why I callled and could they please enlighten me as to why this sum was so much higher than inflation…finally I receive a quote very close to that of the previous year. I have to say the call handler was extremely nice and I made every effort to be polite and friendly…indeed a pleasant exchange. But what a waste of half an hour!! for both of us!…..I was glad that I had a real person to speak to but if these companies didn’t indulge in this practise so much more could be achieved.
Regarding the increasing difficulty of being able to interact with a human about everyday matters, this seems to me to be the end game of Thatcherism…..increasing atomisation and the breaking of societal bonds, resulting in an increasing sense of lack of agency…..this surely must contribute to the widespread political apathy and the acceptance of the economic status quo.
I used to be with a company that did that on every insurance renewal. I got bored and moved.
You are so right, Richard. This has become grotesque, hasn’t it?
It’s not just the annoyance of being put on hold that gets me. It’s that if/ when you finally DO get to speak to somebody, most of the time it’s a call centre employee who can’t answer the question you have, doesn’t actually work for the company, and often just fobs you off with some promise that you take as helpful, but turns out not to be. They will get back to you. They don’t. They will send you that form, that contract, etc. They don’t. Rinse, repeat.
There are still a few companies out there that do customer service well. Even though you probably get a digital menu thing at the start, once you do get through to a human being you’re in clover. The employee does actually work for the company, gives you contact information so you can get back to them, and gets things sorted in a friendly way. But this is becoming the exception, rather than the rule.
Poor customer service is beyond annoying at the moment. We rely on services, and when we can’t access them due to digital hee-haw, we become helpless, scared and left out of the loop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWhkbDMISl8
Debbie Harry summed it up all those years ago
You’re obviously right about externalities of costs for profit-making businesses – although it can come back to bite them in reputation and marketing terms (eg the likes of Trustpilot reviews and service ratings on MSE and Which…)
One comment mentions the NHS, however: for admin and basic factual contacts, by phone, similar issues apply. But isn’t there also an efficiency (or optimal use of valuable resources) issue when it comes to highly-trained and sometimes expensive professional staff? A reasonably full waiting room means the doctor or other skilled person is never idle; and perhaps helps patients to know that the person is busy and they shouldn’t waste their time. My local GPs have recently implemented a digital messaging and Q&A system that also sets them up with basic information about symptoms and the ‘presentation issue’ before I get an appointment; and then send me reminders etc. before the actual time. I do recognise, though, some functional weaknesses (for people who have difficulty describing, or are confused about what’s making them ‘feel ill’) and of course the digital exclusion issue that always applies to anything online: some people always need to speak to a human as the first step (which was previously a difficult and unreliable process of getting into a queue: but since I no longer use that, I don’t know if putting as many as are willing onto the digital system has improved the phone based system).
Along with ‘your call is important to us’ is the ‘this call is being recorded for training purposes’ message.
This explains why your call is never going to be answered. All the operators are busy ‘training’
I recently posted you you tune video on a forum (https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/%E2%80%9Cyour-call-is-valuable-to-us%E2%80%9D.292487/page-2#post-5295751 ) I frequent (where I to promote your excellent work) and got this response https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/%E2%80%9Cyour-call-is-valuable-to-us%E2%80%9D.292487/post-5295751
In particular he says, “ thoroughly depressing that a so called expert refers to HMRC as a “government” organisation. That has not been true for around 20 years.”
Is he right?
No of course he is not
HMRC reports to HM treasury and is entirely responsible to the government.
I bet he is playing silly semantics, at best
Many thanks.
May I quote you?
Eveything I say here is on the record
I agree with every word. The so-called service from modern call centres is a disgrace.
That “we value” lie appears all over the place. The one I notice a lot is the “We value your privacy” lie you see when a cookie notice pops up on a website. My instant reaction is “No, you ******* don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t be logging everything I do and trying to track me all over the Internet!”
Funnily enough I was only having a rant about this the evening before in the pub to a (bored!) friend…
Technology has allowed us to dispense with a lot of the simple, mundane and repetitive jobs. Filing, typing, post-room, accounts clerks. And that’s great, we have systems that can do that just as effectively, if not more so, than before. But then someone decided we could use technology and IVR systems to dispense with call handling. Also could be fair enough if (a) the IVR directing systems actually offered all of the things you might want to talk about (mostly I always seem to have something that doesn’t meet the options assigned to buttons 1 to 9) and (b) you could then speak to the right person. But somehow this clever idea came to them “hang on, do we actually need to have a human answering the phones at all?”. And I don’t know why that was someone’s idea. I really do not understand how we’ve sunk to this low level. But what I really don’t get is – we used to employ people to do all of these simple but important tasks – we’ve removed the need for many but then we’ve got rid of the customer service element too. The organisation used to pay people to do this as part of their operating expenses so it can’t be a case that they no longer can afford to, and it can’t be, surely, due to a lack of suitable qualified (or unqualified) staff available. It’s just bad behaviour. And somehow we allow them to get away with it
If organisations aren’t going to voluntarily provide customer support then the government should mandate it. To include answering % of calls within n minutes.
At the very least there is no excuse for keeping people hanging on. If you want people to queue then it needs to be mandated that they must give the caller the option to be called back when the call handler is available. And again some % and n metrics to comply with.
It would be a great idea for all public interest entities (PIEs)