You know what really Grinds My Gears?
Automated Message Handling Systems. It isn't bad enough that you have to mute the game and spend the better part of your Saturday or Sunday dealing with billing issues, but now you have to deal with a robot on the other end of the line which also happens to be an idiot. Companies have gotten away from traditional customer service representatives and gone over to Automated Message Handling Systems (AMHS). This revolutionary idea is supposed to increase efficiency and allow customers to handle their disputes with the company without having to engage an actual employee. All this has managed to do is leave customers screaming into the phone at an automated voice whose first language isn't even English. These systems were at least remotely bearable when all someone had to do was listen and press a button, but that wasn't enough. Now you actually have to talk to the system and hope that it interprets what you say correctly. As a last result, a customer can actually manage to pull a rep. off of their solitaire game if they have survived the bludgeoning and personal angst that is sure to be suffered from dealing with one of these systems for an afternoon. Is anyone else as fed up with these systems as I am? Do you think customer relationships and personal interaction is suffering?
I couldn't agree with you more Brandon. This summer I received a phone call from the National Republican Party asking me to take a survey. I complied and continued with the survey. Well, lo and behold it was given to me by an AMHS. This would have been fine and dandy if the robot on the other end understood what I was saying! I was totally fine with taking the survey, but when they used a robot that doesn't always understand people it gets frustrating.
ReplyDeleteThis obviously grinds my gears as well since I'm commenting a second time, but yesterday I called Apple for some phone support. It took just under and hour to complete phone call. I would say at least a fourth if not a third of the time was spend talking to a stupid machine. It would have been so much easier just to talk to a real person to begin with. Once I finally got to a technician she asked me some of the same questions as the AMHS. Complete waste of time.
ReplyDeleteI can feel the frustration coming off the computer screen in both of your comments. Always good to know that i am not the only one that would be about ready to rip the phone cord out of the wall if phones had cords anymore.
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