YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT! REALLY?.....

Press 1 ... if you have given up all hope in ever speaking to another human being

Press 2 … if you are now experiencing frustration and anger and need to vent/swear/shout and say a few choice words only to be advised your call is being terminated as bad language or shouting will not be tolerated

Press 3 … if you have better things to do with your time than wait in a queue

Press 4 … if you would like to be put through and then immediately cut off

Press 5 … If you want to speak to someone who can’t answer your question and doesnt even know what day it is!

Press 6 … if you wish to be put through to the wrong department

Press 7 ... if you feel dizzy and ill from the music you are being forced to listen to

Press 8 … If you feel like an unvalued customer and realise that the company you are trying to contact doesnt give a hoot - they have your money and now your on your own!

Press 9 … If you want to just scream  - long and loud!

Press 10… If by the time they answer you have forgotten what it was you called about in the first place - lets face it you have cleaned the house, done an internet shop and had a shower in the time you have been holding!

Press 11… to be told to call back later

Press 12.. if you are fed up with this crap phone system

Press 13 … If you just simply cannot be bothered to go through this anymore - bring back humans all is forgiven!

Press # to listen to all these options again

******

Are there any more annoying phrases in the English language than "your call is important to us", or "we are experiencing particularly high call volumes".

Your call is important to us.  Really is it?  Does anyone actually believe that statement? Is there even the teeny tiniest iota of honesty, or even meaning, vested in that godforsaken line?

Hey, your call is so important to us that we have been ignoring you for 19 minutes which you will have to pay for as this isn’t even a freephone number - sucker!

For words to have any real meaning they need to convey a truth they also need to come from a real person not a machine playing words or a pre-recorded voice without any value whatsoever assigned.  Computers don’t have feelings!  Computers don’t give a damn! 

It’s simply a world we live in that regularly presents a great big digital middle finger to customers all over the world who wish to communicate about a product and service.

Your call is not important!  By telling us otherwise becomes just an irritant.  So, what is going on when our call is on hold and who are the staff we rely on to give us the correct information when we finally get through?

There is nothing worse than have been hanging on for what seems like days only to have some unhelpful person read off a script who aren’t allowed to use their brains when in conversations with customers!

Another irritant that gets me screaming down the phone is the hold music!

Is there anything worse than sitting on hold listening to the variety of unpleasant sounds that pretend to be 'music'.

Most of the so-called music that plays while we wait, wait and wait a bit more for a customer service representative, is awful; it’s treacly, no frills and no thrills blaring out of the headset primarily, so we don’t feel forgotten about whilst we continue remaining on the line.  If its purpose is to entertain, they need to rethink this strategy, as its not happening!  This is another thing that becomes very apparent as the red mist descends that no care has been injected into this part of the call of doom.

Everyone is a victim of not only call centre agents, but before you even get the pleasure of talking to someone, you have to endure the dreaded automated answering system! 

Hocus pocus time to focus!  A number of different options to press are churned out, normally too fast, normally with too many to remember, so by the time you get to the end of listening to this monotonous message you find yourself not just spitting with anger but having to once again press the * or # to have the message repeated! 

Then slap my head and call me silly for even attempting to carry out this impossible mission as after finally number crunching my correct options in, low and behold I find myself connected to yet another set of automated options in the offing – Arrrggggghhh!

What is going on with the world, what has happened to speaking to a human being rather than being taken on this predictable nightmare of a journey which at times hijacks my time and takes me halfway around the world only to be lost  speaking to someone I cannot understand or whose script doesn’t stretch to be able to offer the relevant advice to resolve my dilemma?

It is very tempting to either hang up and cry and go into mourning for the time you will never get back or get really really angry and say the most terrible things in the knowledge that you will never come face to face with ‘Steve’ from Delhi whose really name is Vikas and has been advised to neutralise his accent!

What has happened to customer service?  It is now nothing but two words that have little meaning with the majority of companies who have lost the ability to communicate and have become just a succession of faceless uncaring corporate ineptitude pre-recorded robots. 

On our unwanted, unneeded and hellish customer journey that can be infuriating and unhelpful sometimes some of the options given at the start aren’t even relevant to the reason why you are calling.  Therefore you take a chance and select the option you think is most likely to give you the best results – but it’s a gamble, that rarely pays off, the odds arent in your favour and it can result in you being passed from department to department or person to person or eventually to someone who promises to call you back, but they never do!

I would like to announce that I have nothing against international call centres and I don’t care who I speak to, but this would be untrue, However I also detest speaking to anyone within UK call centres as overall the experience whether its Bolton or Bangalore Doncaster or Delhi, Milton Keynes or Mumbai is normally the same - bad!

So why not just cast aside our typically British reserve and make a fuss? 

Occasionally we do!  When the tethers end has been reached, when there is no light left at the beginning or end of this tunnel; only to be told that the call is going to be terminated as your tone, volume and choice of words are seen to be unacceptable! - Naughty bad you for remaining to be human!  Perhaps at this junction we should merely offer the advisor options, press option 1 if you think I am unhappy, press option 2 if you think I may swear due to the frustration I am feeling etc..

Oh well, it only took most of your day/night, your blood pressure to rise, your head to ache with the music, your skills of decision making to be tried with the number of options available, your ability to remember the phonetic alphabet correctly and use B for Bravo instead of B for Bollocks and S for Sierra instead of S for Stuff it where the sun don’t shine!

So now my best advice is step away from the phone and if you need to sort out anything - try emailing - thats of course if this is an option………..