Once upon a time in the world of communications, a real person answered the phone when you made a telephone call. Some of you can remember the days when you cranked your wall phone and a local operator answered and connected you with the person you were trying to reach. If you were calling someone on your party line you just cranked the long and short number of rings of your party and they answered.
People still use telephones, but how we use them has changed. I still remember our number was three long rings. When the phone rang we had no idea who was calling, but we always answered it. Chances were, it was someone we knew. I don’t think the term telemarketer even existed back then. Now we avoid them like the plague.
Things have really changed since those days. Now you’re more likely to get an answering machine or voice mail than a real person answering the phone. If you’re calling a cell phone number, good luck. Unless you send a text message, you’ll probably wait a long time to get a call-back if you leave a voice mail. It seems to me that people don’t like talking to each other anymore. They’d rather type and send text messages to communicate.
Fast forward fifty plus years from those days when we had a wall phone that you cranked. Now we have all kinds of fancy, high-tech phones to communicate. We also have call waiting, voice mail, answering machines, and different ring tones to let us know we’ve received a call. We don’t want to miss an incoming call from someone. But, we also have Caller ID on our phones and televisions that allow us to see who’s calling. Then we can decide whether we want to answer that call or pretend we aren’t home and just let it ring. If it’s a number we don’t recognize, or what looks like a telemarketing call, we can let the call go to voice mail and they can leave a message. Life has certainly changed, hasn’t it?
That was residential calling. What about business calls? Isn’t it great when you call a business and a real person answers the phone, instead of a recording that asks you to press a bunch of numbers? I work in the communication business. When you call our office, a person answers the phone. If all the lines are occupied, you’re asked to wait until someone answers, or you can dial the extension of the person you’re trying to reach if you know their number.
I bet you’ve called a business and the first thing the automated voice tells you is “Press 1 for English.” I thought this was America where English is the first language. All my grandparents came from Norway. They spoke only Norwegian when they arrived, but they all learned how to speak English. Norwegian was spoken when they were with other Norwegians, but English was used outside the home. Our parents didn’t try to teach us the Norwegian language. My father told us, “We’re in America and you’ll speak American (English)!” I guess that statement sunk in because it still irks me when that automated voice asks me to select English.
This story came about when I tried to book a hotel room recently. The hotel is located in Middleton, Wisconsin. Here again, I like to talk to a real person, so I called the 800 number instead of booking the room online. An automated voice answered the phone. I guess I should have expected that. Then I was given the usual press the number quiz, and yes, I speak English. Unfortunately, the person who finally answered was very hard to understand. I knew from the accent I was connected to a call center in India. I explained that I wanted to book a room for two nights and told him the dates. He wanted to know what hotel I wanted. I won’t use the name of the hotel to protect the guilty, but I thought I was calling the hotel location, not India. I told him the name of the hotel. He gave me the address of a hotel in Middleton, Ohio. I told him no, it’s in Middleton, Wisconsin. After having him repeat questions several times because I couldn’t understand him, I finally got a room booked for two nights. Then I asked for my AARP discount since I knew they had one. Hey, there has to be some advantages for getting old. He didn’t know if it was available and told me he would check. Pretty soon the line went dead and the beep, beep, beep started.
I hung up and began the whole process over again. This time a woman answered, also with a thick Indian accent. When we got to my senior discount she also had to check and I expected the line to go dead again. This time she came back and said the AARP discount wasn’t available that weekend. I was so exasperated at that point I just booked the room.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk to a person in this country, at the place we’re calling instead of a foreign call center? Maybe that would help our unemployment rate too! I guess it’s too much to wish we could bring back that friendly, local operator.
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