:evil: Businesses don't answer phones anymore and it's making me insane!! :evil:

[Anonymous]

I am so frustrated trying to handle normal day to day business when there is no way to speak to a human being! Every simple task or question takes days to resolve since you have to leave a voicemail or email first, then wait until the next day when a staff member might open/listen to it, then another day to "process" a response and then god help you if there is a minor mistake because then you have to send another message and wait for a new response. All of which used to be standard business by handled by a quick phone call 20 years ago. So every day I have multiple lines out to various businesses or schools or whatever and then things slip through the cracks because there is no easy way to track each micro interaction and the status of each item.

This is not an improvement over the way things were done even 15 years ago. All of this stupid technology and internet crap has just made our lives more complicated and stressful. We were promised increased efficiency and more time and all we got were chatbots and self checkout lines that don't even work smoothly. /vent

[Anonymous]

Do you use email? I find it a lot more efficient these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you use email? I find it a lot more efficient these days.

This is from the OP, so it sounds like they have tried email.
Every simple task or question takes days to resolve since you have to leave a voicemail or email first, then wait until the next day when a staff member might open/listen to it, then another day to "process" a response and then god help you if there is a minor mistake because then you have to send another message and wait for a new response. [i]


Op, I've had success tweeting a business sometimes. I agree, it's irritating because sometimes it's easier to take care of business by speaking to a person.

[Anonymous]

Yes, no one wants to talk to us. Companies even bury their phone numbers to make it harder to call. If you do get through, you will probably get a voice prompt thing, which I hate. I just keep mashing numbers until I get a human. The humans are generally pretty useless too though. It will only get worse as companies implement more AI.

[Anonymous]

OP It's horrendous I literally almost pulled my hair out in utter frustration last week. It's exhausting and everything takes a few tries to get anything done. They get away with is because customers put up with it. I'm trying to find ways to deal only with companies I get decent customers service with it's hard but worth striving for. Target, CVS and Comcast was the first to go for me. I'm going to keep at it. Customers can "vote" with their feet. Since most companies are doing this it gets harder but I'm going to try still.

[Anonymous]

The only improvement here is the cut in labor costs due to automation. As if every problem can be resolved by automation. Folks are calling because they have a PROBLEM, not to listen to an automated voice.

I had troubles recently with our bank and cable company. Neither one would transfer me to an agent right off the bat. For one, it took me 20 minutes to game the system to get connected to an agent. For another, the chat bot finally morphed into an agent who figured out how to override the system and stick with me through setting up an appointment. Before that, every time I replied to the chat, it was a new agent asking me to retype EVERYTHING I had just typed to the eight prior agents. Even after setting the appointment, I kept getting calls about "let's resolve this over the phone." How many times had I explained that we needed a cable worker to come to the house and replace faulty equipment.

So annoying!

[Anonymous]

None of my doctors answer the phone anymore either. They don’t respond to portal messages either. I just had to cheat the system by selecting the appointment line just to follow up on forms that I sent last week. 30 second phone call and the receptionist was able to “send it to the nurse” to be filled out. If I hadn’t asked a live human who knows if anyone would ever complete the form.

If you’re going to automate everything then it needs to be flawless with no glitches or lost requests. If that isn’t possible (which clearly it is not) then let human beings talk to one another.

[Anonymous]

I try really hard not to have to call anyone who doesn’t have an office staff answering the phone. If you’re calling, something has gone wrong.

[Anonymous]

I only use their chats, now. Amazon and my healthcare provider (Kaiser Permanente) have excellent chat services in which you reach a real human in record time. Kaiser's chat person is a nurse and they can triage your symptoms for you. They always answer all my questions. Other websites as well. Yesterday I had a question about a product, went to the manufacturer's website, asked the robot in the chat, who got a real human (took 5 min, which is long!), who answered everything to my satisfaction.

Get with the times, OP.

[Anonymous]

I am not one to tweet, but finally resorted to it after experiencing total customer service failure by phone. It got me instant responses. Like, so fast it was funny.

Highly recommend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I only use their chats, now. Amazon and my healthcare provider (Kaiser Permanente) have excellent chat services in which you reach a real human in record time. Kaiser's chat person is a nurse and they can triage your symptoms for you. They always answer all my questions. Other websites as well. Yesterday I had a question about a product, went to the manufacturer's website, asked the robot in the chat, who got a real human (took 5 min, which is long!), who answered everything to my satisfaction.

Get with the times, OP.

I used Target's chat feature twice this weekend and it was great.

[Anonymous]

You sound old. Reminds me of my boss was trying to contact a vendor and not responding to emails or phone calls.

I just slacked the guy for a response in two seconds. My old job I used slack and email and phone maybe I check once a month

[Anonymous]

It's because the 20 somethings they've hired believe phones are for texting, tweeting, posting and other SM, but not for actually phoning someone: that would be rude.

How do I know? I work with them, and they don't care if their voice mail box is full, and won't make a phone call unless you sit there and babysit them to make it happen. And no, there isn't anyone else to take their jobs, even though they are making over $60k.

It's exhausting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You sound old. Reminds me of my boss was trying to contact a vendor and not responding to emails or phone calls.

I just slacked the guy for a response in two seconds. My old job I used slack and email and phone maybe I check once a month

You think it’s just fine that a business that you are patronizing wouldn’t return emails phone calls? You sound…young.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound old. Reminds me of my boss was trying to contact a vendor and not responding to emails or phone calls.

I just slacked the guy for a response in two seconds. My old job I used slack and email and phone maybe I check once a month

You think it’s just fine that a business that you are patronizing wouldn’t return emails phone calls? You sound…young.

Not PP you responded to, but again, this is the new normal. You can choose to evolve or not. If you don't, you die (technologically speaking, but also, you must be very old).