The Word - Vol 89

Your Call is Important!  

Why don’t big companies want to talk to me? It seems the bigger the company the less likely I get to talk to a human being! I’m not sure when this phenomenon began. I’m sure in the old days a phone call was answered promptly and the problem dealt with. If I recall, phone calls were answered by a person and then asked if you wouldn’t mind holding. A few minutes later that person was back on the phone asking how they might help. Isn’t that the way it used to go? ​

I’m not asking much, I just want a person to talk to. Apparently, that person must be really busy, because every time I’m greeted by a phone message telling me that due to a high volume of calls the person who answers the phone is too busy to answer it. Maybe one solution might be to hire more people to answer the high volume of calls. Or perhaps look at your product and try and figure out why so many people are calling your company with questions or requiring assistance. 

Not only is the volume of calls high, but apparently my call is important! Really? Apparently not, considering the time I spend on hold every time I try to get in touch with you. I suspect mine is not an isolated case. I spent two hours on hold the other morning, waiting for a person to talk to, and after two hours of annoying “on hold music” there were a series of “clicks”, and the line went dead. Two hours on hold! I could have had my car serviced or played nine holes of golf! But to wait for two hours only to be disconnected is not only bad service but bad business. 

Name names? I don’t think that’s necessary. We all know who the culprits are. Let’s just say two of them are major communications companies! How’s that for irony? Communications companies you can’t communicate with. Ah, but they’re not alone in the land of hold. No, the first place would be an airline company. Which company? Name any one of them. A good friend was trying to get hold of one airline to clear up a refund and flight change and he was on hold for four hours! Now in four hours, you can play 18 holes of golf! And guess what? After four hours of being on hold with the “on hold music’s greatest hits” click, click, click, the phone went dead. 

​But here’s a tip when on hold, don’t do what my wife, Jeri did. There she was on hold with another airline company and once again with the on-hold music, but this time was better because the wait time due to high volume of calls was only one and half hours. Then she made the fatal mistake. When that very busy person finally answered the phone, Jeri said, “Wow, that was a long wait, you must be really busy?” CLICK, the person on the other end hung up! How’s that for customer service? I wonder if they used the recording of that call for “training purposes?” I guess it would be in the training session on how to deal with customers who complain! 

Is it too late to go back to the good old days of customer service when it comes to a simple phone call? Especially if you are a phone company, there should be enough phones kicking around the office, plug them in, and hire some people to answer them. That might be a start. I should add the front-line workers, the ones who deal with the customers for the most part are very pleasant, courteous and helpful. Of course, these people aren’t the ones who write the rules and make the business decisions, and it’s got to be a tough job answering questions and trying to solve problems for the customers. 

Maybe we should get the people who run the show to place a call to their own company and try to talk to someone. I just hope they’re not experiencing a high volume of calls because I’m sure their call is important. 

Till next week…
Wayne

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