Call Centres

Imagine, if you would, walking in to a supermarket to be greeted by a member of staff who asks you the following question:

"Would you like electrical goods, groceries, home care or clothing?"

When you reply with: "Well, actually I'd like several things" the member of staff responds with "I'm sorry, would you like electrical goods, groceries, home care or clothing?"

"Well, I'll start off by getting some cheese please."

"I'm sorry, would you like electrical goods, groceries, home care or clothing?"

"Groceries you ignorant twat."

"This way sir."

At this point member of staff #1 takes you to meet member of staff #2, who happens to sound exactly the same as member of staff #1. "Would you like dairy, meat, fish, bakery or frozen produce...?" Eventually, after a series of ever refining questions and new staff members, member of staff #7 issues you with your cheese. When you then ask fro some crackers, member of staff #7 reintroduces you to member of staff #1, you asks "Would you like electrical goods, groceries, home care or clothing?", at which point presumably the last of your patience would evaporate and you would use your freshly retrieved cheese to attempt to make member of staff #1 completely air tight.

You can see where I'm going with this. Back in the days when telephony was new and exciting, you would lift the receiver of your phone and on the other end of the line would be a real human being. You would tell that human being that you wanted to talk to another human being, and they would connect you to that human being. The system worked well. Unfortunately this system didn't last, for three reasons:

1. Human beings need food and drink and stuff and so cost money

2. Machines don't

3. Businessmen are, by and large, money grabbing bastards.

So, in the modern age of telephony if you have to speak to anyone other than someone whose phone number you already have, you almost always have to speak to a machine, which operates entirely in the manner of our imaginary supermarket. I once came across an amazing exception to this rule: a few years ago I called the technical support line of a little known Welsh broadband company. It was eleven at night on a Sunday, but despite this I immediately got through to a real person. Admittedly he was French, but I was so gobsmacked by the fact that he a) existed and b) proceeded to help me with my problem I nearly offered to send him a tripe sausage and snails.

Sadly since that time the small Welsh company has been bought out by a much larger American company and my helpful Frenchman has probably been deported in favour of another fucking automated sodding machine. As soon as this happened I immediately cancelled my account.
As far as I can make out these machines don't seem to work either. I had to use one yesterday to speak to my bank; I went through no less than five menus before getting through to something with a pulse, but despite the fact that I had gone through all those menus and refined the possibilities as to why I was calling, she still didn't seem to have the first fucking clue as to why I was on the phone. I therefore had to explain everything I'd already punched in to the Borg over the previous 15 minutes.

Still, I guess I was lucky. At least in her case she spoke English with a clear and understandable accent. I'm not going to go in to the hardships of those who work in overseas call centres, if for no other reason than Rotten.com have covered the issue much better than I could. However, there are few things more soul destroying than spending fifteen minutes navigating an automated menu system and listening to Casio Keyboard Classics before being put through to a person for whom English is a ninth language.
It is a state of affairs that cannot go on. I would therefore like to propose the following methods for us all to adopt when dealing with call centres:

1. Ask them if they could arrange for a stenographer to be present at their end so you can have an accurate written record of the conversation.

2. Attempt to perform a citizen’s arrest on the call centre worker when they start wasting your time.

3. When you do eventually get through to a real person, say the following: "Press 1 followed by the hash key for my name. Press 2 followed by the star key for my address. Press 3 followed by the panda key for my waste size as a percentage of the gross domestic product of Lichtenstein. Press 4 followed by the sneeze key for advice on baking gingerbread." If they do anything other than press a key, give them four completely different options.

4. Fire up the English to Klingon Dictionary. Learn the Klingon for the words "address", "telephone", "bill", "please", "name", "understand" and "platypus". Try and use them all in the conversation.

5. Masturbate furiously.

6. Buy a whistle, the louder the better. Blow it down the phone whenever you feel the call centre worker is wasting your time.

7. When the call centre worker asks you if there's anything else they can help you with try and convince them to order your online shopping for you. This is more successful if you take a step by step approach: Ask them to go on to the Internet first, then tell them to go to the website, select each product, etc. etc. If they ask why, just say "Ah, all will become clear my fine furry friend."

And so on. I'm sure there are many others, and if you can think of some then dump them in the comments section below. With any luck those corporations that run these call centres will get the message, and give us some real people to talk to. More likely though they'll give us more complicated phone systems to talk to. The bastards.

Rant over.