Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Talk to me Anymore?

Have your robot call my robot and we’ll see what we can schedule.

Yesterday I tried to cancel a doctor’s appointment that I had scheduled for later in the week. After working my way through a list of automated menu items, I chose what I thought to be the best choice — something called “schedule an appointment” — not exactly what I wanted, but certainly in the same ballpark. I gave my name, birth date, phone number and reason for my call — “I would like to cancel my appointment for Thursday at 1:00. Please call me back to confirm that you received my message.” As I pretty much expected, no return call — but, hey, I left my message. Surely someone picked up the message from the robotic automated attendant and took care of my request.

Today, my cell phone rings. It’s an unknown caller, which I usually don’t pick up but, for some reason, today I did. It was the automated attendant calling from the doctor’s office to remind me of my scheduled appointment for Thursday at 1:00. That was it. Straight forward and simple. No option to speak to an actual human being. The doctor’s office has my credit card on file. I don’t want to be charged for an appointment I “missed” because they failed to register the fact that I cancelled in plenty of time. Do I call back and talk to the automated attendant again — do I do nothing and not bother to show up (and argue with the billing department later if they charge me for my missed appointment) — do I just go to the appointment anyway? This is the world of the twenty-first century. No one wants to actively engage with another human being if they can possibly avoid it.

As I check the messages and missed calls on my phone, I see that I have eight missed calls so far today. Four of them have been flagged by my data carrier as “Fraud Alert,” two are flagged “telemarketer,” and two are flagged “Possible Spam.” None are from an actual human being — and, of course, none are from my doctor’s office. Where have all the humans gone?

I understand the hesitancy of many people to avoid human interaction. People tend to be annoying, petty and, all too often, abrasive. I get that. I don’t necessarily want to talk to every human on the planet either. But then again, I don’t have to. I’m not getting paid to perform a service, such as scheduling appointments, selling, promoting a product, gathering information or any of the myriad other tasks humans used to perform face-to-face or phone-to-phone on their jobs. I’m not getting paid — and the robots aren’t getting paid either. But there are actually people out there who are getting paid! Paid to do a job that is increasingly automated — and increasingly ineffective (from my point of view) in accomplishing the tasks required.

Full disclosure — I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories — I must confess to that. And I definitely have one when it comes to the proliferation of canned communications in the world at large. Everyone wants to streamline their efforts, regardless of what their product or service may be. They want to do it with the least amount of hassle possible. And, they don’t want to have to spend time and money doing rework. A great way to avoid rework is to limit the amount of access a potential customer has to a business. Ideally, once they have placed an order or scheduled an appointment, all that business really wants is to close the deal. If you make the robotic, automated system complicated and annoying enough, people may stop trying to cancel, change or modify whatever it was they contacted the business about to begin with. Using my doctor appointment as an example, given the options of continuing to try to call and cancel the appointment, being a “no show” and getting billed for not cancelling in time or just going to the originally scheduled appointment and getting it over with, I might have been tempted to stop aggravating myself and just go to the appointment. Whether I go to the appointment or don’t go and get billed as a “no show,” the doctor’s office wins either way. They collect a fee and did not have to spend time with me trying to change my appointment.

This viewpoint may seem a little snide on my part, and it probably is, but I do truly think society has become a little less customer friendly these days.

I miss the days when a friendly receptionist would greet my call like he/she was glad to have my business. I miss the opportunity to find a sense of camaraderie with the people I do business with — those are are truly happy to make my transaction pleasurable and convenient on my terms — those who really hope I will come back again.

I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones, actually. I have enough patience, knowledge and technical savvy to navigate this brave, new world of customer service — with a certain amount of disgruntlement. But there are still many people, in every generation, without the needed skill set to cope with or understand exactly what is going on when they try to interact with our current techno-society. Not everyone shops online and awaits deliveries at their doorstep. Not everyone can make their way through an involved menu of options for directing their phone call to the proper department to help them. Not everyone has access to the tools of technology that make our world go round in the twenty-first century. Who can they talk to?

If I’m unhappy with my struggle to find a human to solve my issues, what is old Mrs. Magillicutty down the street supposed to do? And there are still plenty of Mrs. Magillicutty’s around. There are under served people in every age group and across all socioeconomic lines. There are people with physical or mental challenges trying to cope with everyday life. There are people lacking the intellectual capacity to understand the changes in the world around them. There are still many people who need human interaction to navigate through life. How are they supposed to find someone to talk to, someone to straighten out the hiccups of daily interaction with retailers, doctors, lawyers or service providers of any sort? Why doesn’t anyone want to talk to me (or you, or anyone else) anymore?

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