WAIT! THIS IS THE BIGGEST LIE CALL CENTRES TELL US EVERY SINGLE DAY
Call any business right now and it’s a safe bet that you will hear a pink robot saying: “I’m sorry for the delay, we are experiencing unusually high call volume at the moment.”
It is also a safe bet that they are not!
In fact if you believe the blue-rinsed voice of this Stepford Wife wannabe, every company in the world with a switchboard is so dedicated to keeping their customers satisfied that they simply can’t cope any more.
And being put on hold for a couple of hours is the least you can do to ease their worry about you.
Well, ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls and anybody else who is reading this, they are LYING to you through their artificially empathetic teeth.
Yep, LYING to you …
And it is worth noting that up to 85 per cent of them are probably at home having a cop of coffee and a Deliveroo in-front of Loose Woman while their dog licks soap suds out of their bobbly tights.
The truth is – according to experts – fewer agents are employed at any time since the pandemic.
And call volumes are about the same as it was PRIOR to the pandemic.
The truth is, cutbacks and a lack of resources for working from home have made the industry axe 25 per cent of its staff. In the UK three years ago there were more than 800,000 people employed on an average wage of about £23,000 a year.
And in India and the Philippines things are worse – entire tower-block offices were shut down because of COVID. And nobody has done anything to re-open them again.
“Call volume is not up,” said Maddy Martin, head of growth and education for Smith.ai, a US firm working with virtual receptionists. “The same number of calls per week are being fielded as last year.”
Aaron Sackett, from the University of St. Thomas, says companies have adopted “unusually high call volume” as their default position.
He also said the call volume recordings may be intended to move people online.
The problem is human service reps are just too expensive. At £23,000 a year? Really?
A recent study by IBM showed that IS businesses spend more than a trillion dollars a year on customer calls. A call handled by a human can cost a company up to $200. An automated system cost is about $1.
The underlying technology of these devices was invented by Collins Radio, Iowa, half a century ago.
And now companies hide behind robots and lies while making you hang on for nothing before you hand over your dosh.
Here we have another nail in the coffin of our financial and customer services.
It should be illegal to tell consumers that they’re the problem when the problem is actually companies perpetuating a world-wide lie.
Honesty should still be the best policy.
But lets be honest about the pink robots who work in call centres … what a life!
The moment they finish one call, another one gets routed to them. No rest for the weary.
It’s an exhausting job.
And one that has limitations philosophically.
At the core of this big lie is leaving customers waving like the last-gasp man in a dystopian movie as the pink robots slip on their listening ears and their empathy heads and click you onto hold … forever.
#CALLCENTREBLUES #CALLCENTRES #CUSTOMERSERVICES #VIRTUALRECEPTIONISTS #LIES
