Customer Service

My dad, 78 years old, slightly deaf, non-computer literate, does not even own a computer and to be honest lacks a little patience! He came over to my house and said someone had driven their car into his car. Telephone the insurer. 30 mins wait for answer, with a message telling me, quicker for me to go online and visit their website. My dad wanted to speak to someone and to be honest so did I.

Then having the phone answered a multitude of questions, I understand that. Cutting a very long story very short for the purpose of sharing this, we finished the call over 1 hour and 45 minutes later often repeating questions asked and answers given.

I then had to ring my mobile provider, various press 1 for this, 2 for that and so on. Eventually after around 15 minutes spoke to another human being! Explained I wanted 2 problems sorting, one to change one of my phones from individual contract to a business contract. One to cancel some contracts that had expired. First problem switching the phone, not a problem, went through all the usual questions around, what, why, when. Then it came to the name to which the phone would be transferred…….’Oh, a business, I can’t do that, I misunderstood!’ ‘I will have to transfer you to another department, I will explain to my colleague your situation so you won’t have to repeat yourself’ Put on hold, 10 mins later through to the colleague who has no idea why I am ringing! So ran through it all again. This time success, phone switched. Then my other problem, cancelling my two expired contracts. ‘Ah, I can’t do that, I will need to transfer you to another department’ Put on hold 5, minutes later through. Again, the questions and answers around the what, why, when. In the end all sorted……….but I was on the phone for 1 hour, 10 mins, 24 seconds in total!

Who has the time for all this in a busy day??!

Wouldn’t be great to pick up the telephone, ring a number, a human picks up and asks, ‘how can I help today?’ You tell them and they say, ‘No problem, I can do that for you!’  Not all of us want to go online, not all of us wants to speak to an automated person asking us to describe in a few words why we are ringing, not all of us want to press this key or that!