Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime
Comments
And for all our Talkback friends in other countries, do you have problems with this or are we just blighted?
I have a vague idea of the line I'll be taking, but need to do some associated research for it.
Any help or suggestions will be gratefully received.
I'm also looking into whether these systems create problems for people with visual and/or hearing impairments.
The automated system told me I was about fifth in line, so I hung on.
And on. And on.
Eventually it told me I was next.
Then the voice said, "Thank you for calling the Financial Times" and it HUNG UP on me!
Government departments are a nightmare to contact, I find you often get the message 'we are experiencing a high volume of calls to this number, please try again later.' Only when you can get through they've all gone home!
Any more examples welcome.
Just don't get me started about NTL. At least it's free when you call them from an NTL line, that's about the only good thing. Long waits, bad music, annoyingly long list of "press X number for Y query", and usually they still haven't got an option for the thing that you actually want to ask them about.
There are reasons why me having a rant (about anything) is now referred to as "an NTL moment" by my housemates!
Betsie, tell me more. I'm interested in any of these answer systems and what businesses small and large do with them.
As I discovered while doing some basic research on Thursday, there are a variety of systems, and you can do a lot with them depending on your needs and how many phones and people you have. UK automated attendant systems start at £800, so we can safely say many businesses pay the minimum they can get away with.
That is probably why we have so many problems with them.
Keep them coming.
I'm quite happy to receive anything by Webbo's system from Talkbackers.
What I have found that works to some degree, is registering with the Telephone Preference Service. It has reduced cold calling to us by 99 per cent.
Anyone rings up, I stop them by saying we have registered, and legitimate organisations automatically apologise for contacting me, and say they will note that we are registered with TPS and won't contact us again.
I only receive calls from those organisations I have asked to contact me. And the odd few that seem to come from abroad and I just say I'm not interested and put the phone down.
I think a real help is to always check the little bits at the bottom of things you sign up to- those little boxes with a space for ticking what you don't want or do want to receive from them and other third parties.
And things by post- put Return to Sender with an indicator where the return address is located on unwanted commercial stuff- it costs them money to get it back.
Other suggestions I've come across are put the stuff in their own envelopes and also use those from other organisations, and their stuff in the other ones envelopes. It doesn't take long for them to get the message and remove your name.
Try some of these Dorothy- when applicable.
Poor Lily, what a dreadful time.
You do have to wonder if these companies do want our custom when they treat people like that.
I find I can forgive shops a lot if you are stuck in a queue, and when you get to the counter they apologise for the wait. It might help if these phone organisations did something similar.
"Thank God!! A real person!!"
I hate doing business over the phone. I much prefer doing it face to face with a real person - and that option is getting taken away gradually.
We used to have an Electricity board office in our village, with a very helpful and knowledgeable woman who ran it.
They closed it down in the interests of "efficiency", despite petitions from the locals. What did we get instead? A phone line from the local SPAR shop, where any casual shopper could pass by and hear all your business while you shuffled into a corner with no-where to put the paperwork you wanted to refer to. This was supposed to be a comparable service to what we had lost. I have always refused to use it.
I suspect the problem is not enough people for the quantity of calls received.
Actually I had to ring up a gov't department yesterday morning, and I got through straightaway-so perhaps they are finally getting their acts together after various damming reports on the issue.
Just to make it more fun, Eircom (Irish equivalent of BT), has now changed from a mere button-pressing marathon to a voice-activated one; a recorded voice tells you which word to say for what department, with the menus equally convoluted.
Perhaps this is intended to help blind people, but if I were blind I imagine I'd have have learned the standard phone keys (or would use adapted ones). I would also have even more difficulty than sighted people in finding everyone in the house, in order to forewarn them that my abrupt words, punctuating the long silences, are not a summons, a call for help or any other remark, and that saying 'What?' can flummox the system so I have to start again.
I would also like to know how to explain this to a dog. I imagine it could be difficult for people with sheepdogs, with their reflex to obey commands, but even a conversational woof at the wrong moment could confuse the system. Even normally spoken words don't work - I usually have to repeat them more and more emphatically, until I'm barking myself (in both senses).
On the other hand, perhaps Eircom's technical people did it just because they can, to show how modern they are.
I don't know if you can ring them from the UK to get the flavour, as it's a freephone number, 1901 (the Irish international code is 00353). If you can ring it, I'd go for 'sales' if that's an option on that number, as otherwise you'll probably need an Irish phone number to get far (sorry to be vague, but I avoided that system if at all possible).
Cold-calling has got pretty bad here too, mainly due to an explosion of telephone companies. In my area they're all chasing round a small population. (They keep trying again every couple of weeks). It always seems to be at a bad time (why can't they ring during business hours?) I try not to be impatient with the people who call, as they're probably in areas with no jobs, and lured by companies promising high OTT (over the top?) earnings. And I don't mind them asking who my phone company is, especially as most of them give up - for now - on hearing it (largely, I'd guess, because it's no longer Eircoma - sorry, Eircom). But it's quite an exercise in patience when they ask me to spell UTV (a well-known provider here), and then don't understand it because they're in India, judging from the voice. I then try, say, 'U for uncle', but always seem to hit on words they don't know...
At least most of them have stopped asking for my husband, and ask for whoever deals with our phone bills (I do wish computer companies, for instance, would follow that lead into the 21st century).
I registered with our 'no cold calls' system recently, and can't wait till it kicks in!
I've only had one, Orange phones, it was clearly a foreign call centre, who just ignored it and carried on.
Hopefully your system will work as well.
But it's true, tell them you're registered with TPS and they immediately apologise and don't ring again.