Your call is important to us - yeah, right! Ian Loughran bemoans the rise of the call centre.
Last week, I called the call centre of a large airline. Because of flight cancellations, I had to rearrange a flight quickly and the last flight out was leaving in three hours.
I had tried to book online but, as their system was temporarily frozen, I had no choice but to call to arrange the booking. On getting connected, an automated message informed me I had a wait of about one hour and 10 minutes.
In my dire situation, I had no choice but to hold. During the wait, I was repeatedly thanked for calling and told my call was important. Strange as it may seem, after the first 20 minutes of waiting I did not feel very important, after 40 minutes, I felt even less important.
After an hour, my will to live was slipping away and I would have sliced off my right arm to hear a human voice. To add insult to injury, I was played a repeated message about how much easier it would be if I hung up and went online, especially as I had previously tried in vain to book online.
Further insult was added by playing me a repeated series of advertisements including holidays to the island I was stuck on and from which I was trying in vain to get a booking to get home.
Eventually, a human voice. No apology for the delay but it is likely they had never heard a complaint about the delay as by the time customers get to speak to someone they are so grateful that all is forgiven in the moment of human connection and the sweet possibility of issue resolution.
Our technological age has made life much easier and cheaper for companies to operate call centres. An automated PABX system (yes, sounds like something from Star Trek) enables calls to be handled and switched without a human operator.
Fibre connections and computer-based operations, not to mention network upgrades, means the whole call centre business is now cheaper and faster to operate.
These technological advances have assisted the booming overseas call centre industry to offer very cheap and therefore attractive call centre operations to service providers.
Overseas working contracts also mean our big companies have no annoying weekend or evening penalty rates needing to be paid to staff a call centre.
One would be excused for thinking all this was good news for the customer, as it should mean better and faster service when having to call in. Sadly, this is not the case, as call centres are a cost the company would rather not pay.
It is not in their financial interest to incentivise you to use their call centre. Online transactions have a negligible cost-to-use ratio, so there is a huge incentive to push customers on to the web.
Anyone who has had to hold trying to reach a call centre operator can attest to hearing the "your query may be more quickly handled online'' message until they know it off by heart.
Companies will operate call centres with the minimum staff ratio possible. They want to make sure the call-in experience is painful so it is no longer part of the consumer culture.
They are slowly but surely achieving this, as anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of having to call a call centre in recent times is far from keen to repeat the experience. Companies know they won't get many complaints as those trying to do so must call in and go through purgatory.
"Your call is important to us.'' I think not.
-Ian Loughran is a Dunedin-based poet, writer, broadcaster and performer.
Your call is important to us
Your call is important to us.
So much so we make you wait, upon your nerves we will grate.
Your call is important to us.
So much so there is no-one to take your call, we will drive you up the wall.
Your call is important to us.
We will use the hold time to advertise, until all our products and services you are wise.
Your call is important to us.
We will save money on new technology to make us efficient.
We will save using minimal call to operator coefficient.
We will save on overseas call centres with cheaper wages,while still making you wait for ages.
We will not pass the savings on to you, our bills are higher we admit it's true.
You can always call to complain.
Your call is important to us.
- Ian Loughran 2016
