My personal hell
I know now what my personal hell will be. Sisyphus had to roll a boulder up a hill and Tantalus had to reach for fruit and water that were out of reach. If the gods have a sense of humor for my eternal punishment, they will subject me to a never-ending looping phone tree promising me escape if I can hit the right combination of buttons.
Case in point, I just called UPS and really wanted to talk to someone about picking up the package that they couldn't deliver to my apartment for I wasn't there. After spending time trying to figure out where in their site to get information on pick-ups for existing packages (I could track my package, send a package, or order supplies for a package), I gave up and took the step of actually calling someone. If you know me and phones, I don't take this step lightly, for I find phones abjectly annoying in every way.
After finding their toll-free number, I called and got a phone tree... with the same three annoying options played to me over and over. And it was not one of those simple "press 1" trees, but one of those REALLY annoying "say your choice" trees. Feeling like I needed the right incantation, I kept pressing the 0 key and saying "help" and "operator" and what not to no avail, for the phone tree lady voice was unimpressed. Over and over she stated "I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that, your choices are..." to my increasing ire. I don't know what finally triggered it transferring me to a bona fide human being. Maybe my growing profanity toward the phone tree voice finally made it think "oh shit, this guy's angry" so that it would send me to an actual person who actually proved helpful and pleasant for my really simple question of "can I just pick it up myself today?" (answer: yes). That whole exchange with a person only took about a minute after 15 minutes of playing games with the automated system that was supposed to expedite my call.
I don't get the corporate mentality of customer service now. Between horridly designed phone tree systems and operators with tenuous grasps of English, are they really saving money by angering us all? I worked for corporate phone-based customer service in the mid 1990's when I worked at J. Crew and we HAD to give a personalized and professional touch to our calls or our asses were fired. What happened to that in only ten years?
Oy.
Case in point, I just called UPS and really wanted to talk to someone about picking up the package that they couldn't deliver to my apartment for I wasn't there. After spending time trying to figure out where in their site to get information on pick-ups for existing packages (I could track my package, send a package, or order supplies for a package), I gave up and took the step of actually calling someone. If you know me and phones, I don't take this step lightly, for I find phones abjectly annoying in every way.
After finding their toll-free number, I called and got a phone tree... with the same three annoying options played to me over and over. And it was not one of those simple "press 1" trees, but one of those REALLY annoying "say your choice" trees. Feeling like I needed the right incantation, I kept pressing the 0 key and saying "help" and "operator" and what not to no avail, for the phone tree lady voice was unimpressed. Over and over she stated "I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that, your choices are..." to my increasing ire. I don't know what finally triggered it transferring me to a bona fide human being. Maybe my growing profanity toward the phone tree voice finally made it think "oh shit, this guy's angry" so that it would send me to an actual person who actually proved helpful and pleasant for my really simple question of "can I just pick it up myself today?" (answer: yes). That whole exchange with a person only took about a minute after 15 minutes of playing games with the automated system that was supposed to expedite my call.
I don't get the corporate mentality of customer service now. Between horridly designed phone tree systems and operators with tenuous grasps of English, are they really saving money by angering us all? I worked for corporate phone-based customer service in the mid 1990's when I worked at J. Crew and we HAD to give a personalized and professional touch to our calls or our asses were fired. What happened to that in only ten years?
Oy.