Rubbish music, chatbots and online queues: welcome to your life lived on hold

‘Yesterday I spent 40 minutes on hold on the phone, trying to cancel a subscription that took five minutes to sign up to.’‘Yesterday I spent 40 minutes on hold on the phone, trying to cancel a subscription that took five minutes to sign up to.’Last year British taxpayers spent 800 years waiting to speak to HMRC. This is the price of a world digitised on the cheapn taking stock of how we spend our days, no one likes to think of all the hours we’ve spent on the phone to the tax office.

The NAO’s explanation given for this “declining spiral” of customer service is by now as familiar as HMRC’s hold music: cost-cutting, ineffective management, a piecemeal transition to digital. Yesterday I spent 40 minutes on hold on the phone trying to cancel a subscription that took five minutes to sign up to, and which promised I could cancel “anytime”. “Cancel anytime you have 40 minutes” would be more truthful advertising.

It bores me to describe all this almost as much as it bored me to go through it – and yet we must, just to participate in society. I have caught myself thinking recently, with disquieting frequency, the same sorts of things as my 74-year-old father says about “so-called progress”, and “How is anyone supposed to know?”

The real affront in this approach is that it’s creating more work, for everyone. “Customer service professionals”, invariably overworked and underpaid, are now obliged by user surveys to make halting digital small talk. Those of us on the other side of the interaction are forced to laboriously type out our queries and complaints, or hold the line for help.

Source: Entertainment Trends (entertainmenttrends.net)

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