An ex-daughter-in-law had a bill with a hospital and had left our phone as a contact number. I suppose it had been turned over to a collection agency because I answered the phone to hear a recorded message, something to the effect of..."Please hold for an important message about a past due bill for (her name). I hung the phone up.
Had an actual person called I would have been happy to provide them with whatever information I could, but recorded messages have become the bane of telephone business transactions from my point of view. When I want something it aggravates me no end to dial a company number and hear "Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available operator" and fifteen minutes later my arm is cramping from holding a phone to my ear and listening to elevator music. One thing I can guarantee you, if that company has a competitor that uses live operators, they will get my business every time.
I understand the reason for a company to use such a system. In order to have enough operators to handle rush times they would have a half dozen operators on the payroll sitting idle during slow times. The electronic message systems are a cost savings to them. That said, I also understand that if most callers are waiting fifteen minutes to a half hour for a live operator to respond, they are understaffed. They are looking only at the bottom line difference between the cost of the electronic system vs. paying live operators. They need to do a little research to see how many people get tired of waiting and hang-up. That is a lost customer and it doesn't take very many of those to pay for more operators. If the hang-ups are like me, I will have changed to a competitor that actually answers the phone (at least with minimal time) and they've not just lost my business this time, but for all times.
There is a balance between bottom line profit margins and customer satisfaction. If a company is just looking at the balance sheet and ignoring customer satisfaction, their business will eventually decline and fail. I've seen it many times in this country. A competitor is drawing business away and instead of looking for ways to better please and provide for the customer, they start looking for ways to cut costs. Laying off people seems always to be the first step the financial advisors propose in cutting costs, which simply means you have less people to take care of your customers. Hence, more disgruntled customers taking their business elsewhere.
Then there's the menus. Press one for choice "A". Press two for choice "B". Etc.
Press one for English.
