A few days ago my phone line went silent. I rang BT (British Telecommunications plc). After about ten minutes and several phone calls later, trying to dodge past multiple choice computers and computerised music, I eventually got to talk to some helpful humans. Do you, they asked, have any extensions on your line? (One badly behaved extension can shut everything down, it seems.) Yes, several. Unplug each one, they said, one at a time, and see if things improve. The extension in my bathroom was the culprit. It had got wet. When I unplugged it, all was well again. So, aside from the difficulty of getting through to the helpful humans in the first place, a good result. Another of the humans rang me the following day to check that all was well, which it was. Thank you gentlemen, great job, wonderful.
But then earlier today I had another call, from a market research company calling “on behalf of BT” wanting to ask me more questions about my “experience” with the fault I’d reported. I told them the story you have just read, minus the complaints about the multiple choice computers and the moron music. I said that I was very satisfied with the advice I’d been given, and that my problem was solved. No, no engineers had called. No worries. Okay?
No. Not okay. Would I mind “answering some questions” about all this? What?! I thought I just had. This would apparently take “about five minutes”. I said yes I would mind. I’ve just told you the story, for heaven’s sake. Write that down.
What was depressing about this call today was that although this was clearly an intelligent human doing the talking, he, unlike the people who had actually helped me, was obviously reading from a script, and this script had beaten all the commonsense out of him. I just couldn’t face five minutes (or more) wading through this conversational treacle just when I had got deep into doing something else. So, I said I would mind, and that was that.
Afterwards I felt bad about this. BT had helped me. Why couldn’t I answer a few questions? I felt guilty, and then angry about being made to feel guilty. Grrrr!
So, having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, by telling me (eventually) how to handle my phone problem, BT then snatched defeat back again by trying to inflict an annoying conversation on me, and then making me feel bad about having said get lost.
Now that I think about it, it also annoys me intensely when BT calls me to ask whether I’d like my phone bill reduced. Yes, I say. Then please tell us which numbers you use most often. This is insane. They know the answer to that at least as well as I do, because they list it all on my phone bills. And after I’ve told them that, how many more questions will there be? I say: “If you want to cut my phone bill, then cut it. When you’ve decided about that, I’ll decide about whether I go on using BT. Put that in your questionnaire!” Jesus. But of course they can’t, because there’s no question that goes “Is this call driving you insane?”, and no box for “Yes it f***ing is!”, in this particular idiot script. You can feel BT’s market share collapsing during calls like these, right in front of their idiotically self-blinded eyes.
BT are fine at installing phones. Their engineers are fine, and great to deal with. But when it comes to the ancient and ignoble art of using telephones to drive people crazy, BT’s “marketers” and “market researchers” are, in my experience, among Britain’s leading offenders. It’s ironic when you think about it. Britain’s biggest phone company uses its own product to drive its own customers crazy.
*
Dealing with and being dealt with by big organisations on the phone doesn’t have to be like this. BT should take some lessons from Viking Direct, from whom I and the Libertarian Alliance get our office supplies.
When I call Viking Direct it’s a human who answers, not a machine with a recorded humanoid voice, and she usually does this straight away. Sharon (“This is Viking Direct my name is Sharon how may I help you?”), or whoever, is most definitely the product of her training. But she uses her computer to make things easier for me rather than more impersonal and pre-scripted, for example by checking exactly which printer toner cartridges I ordered last time and ordering the exact same ones again, or by volunteering that there’s a special offer on A4 paper so I can have it even cheaper than usual, which, chances are, makes me order a couple of extra boxes.
Note that, BT. She tells me about the price cut, and immediately arranges for me to get it. There’s no nonsense about me having to tell them which item I order most frequently.
Nor does Sharon try to bash me into a pre-scripted conversational prison. We simply talk, like the two humans that we are. There’s the big clever machine, and there’s Sharon and me making maximum use of it, two people working intelligently together, both of us on the same side.
And nobody ever rings me up later to pester me about whether Sharon and her computer have been helpful, presumably because if they want to know this, they simply stand behind her and listen, or perhaps listen in on another extension.
Another for our “triumphs of capitalism” collection, don’t you agree?
*
You will not be amazed to learn, if you don’t know it already, that whereas BT is a quasi-governmental, heavily regulated organisation which it is complicated and costly to take your business away from, Viking Direct, although big and bureaucratised, is nevertheless out there every hour of the day in the freest bit of the free market, the bit where me taking my business elsewhere is as easy as me picking up a different catalogue and trying a different number. Which is all part of why I haven’t and don’t plan to.
BT on the other hand, I may be switching from …
