There’s no surprise in the fact that no human wants to take our call at banks, government offices, or the vast number of other services that have set up robotic phone routing systems.
Cultural observers have been noting for some time that we are at the beginning of a revolution in robotics. The prediction has it that machines will do what has previously been done by people, even in many service industries. In truth this transformation has been going on for a long time. Ask anyone who has tried to reach a service provider such as a utility or cable company. Robots now “answer” the phones in the nation’s largest customer service centers and many smaller businesses as well.
It is up to us to push buttons and envision menus to find approximations to the questions we need addressed. No live human really wants to greet us at our banks, government offices, or any other of the dozens of services that have set up routing systems that might save a little money. But it’s worth pausing to notice what we’ve lost.
At best, the human/automated system “interface” is often frustrating, time consuming and—could it be otherwise?—dehumanizing. Everyone has horror stories about the company that touts its customer service, but still manages to tie us up for the better part of a morning. Indeed, long phone queues are becoming the norm for many firms, especially those who have already sold their services to a customer.
Medical insurance companies seem to be the worst. Anyone who must reach them to clarify a payment or seek permission for a medical procedure will run the equivalent of a sports decathlon. Professionals who must deal with them as part of their work now equip themselves with phone headsets, antacids and other work that can done while they wait out a company with no financial incentive to deal with a claim. This is a new kind of political-style filibuster found in many businesses after a point-of-sale exchange is finished.
There are a few faceless giants for whom contact with another sentient creature is virtually impossible. Trouble with Google e-mail? You are on your own. Hit the “?” key and the best you can get is a link to little generic “help” essays that mostly end in useless cul-de-sacs. Google is a huge “service provider” without service. Apple’s iTunes can be as bad. Apple’s famous “closed system” philosophy is, well, not much help to those of us without Steve Job’s intuitions.
If we want a visual reference to these faceless giants, think of a downtown telephone exchange building in a large city, perhaps 12 stories high with no windows, no markings, and no welcoming access for pedestrians. (There’s a large one owned by A.T.&T. in Tribeca at 33 Thomas Street) If you have business inside, it will have to be conducted through a wire.
AT&T Long Lines building in lower Manhattan
A friend actually has a phone contact at super-giant Amazon.com. and can report that there are live people who can deal with a customer. But she guards this hard-won secret with her life.
There are positive stories as well. I am happy to report that the electronics maker Onkyo will connect a customer to an engineer who will troubleshoot a problem over the phone. They actually seem pleased to be able to help, even though the buyer may have purchased a modestly priced item. The same is true at my local Ford dealer. A person always responds to a call. That’s really no surprise. The owner is a gifted salesperson. Potential sales or repairs are not opportunities he wants to farm out to an electrical router.
An old switchboard or its electronic equivalent requires a human to connect us to another human. No integrated circuit is trying to be a person.
But it’s mostly true these days that someone who wants to experience customer service will probably be most satisfied calling 911 or eating in a restaurant. Save the emergency call for an emergency. As for restaurants, longtime owner Jeff Benjamin notes that he tries to hire people who have a “hospitality gene.” These are people who get genuine pleasure in making their customers happy. (Front of the House, 2015). Alas, with notable exceptions, the gene isn’t found in the management or customer service staff at a lot of businesses.
There’s a generational difference as well. My students don’t expect much help from other humans in service positions. In fact many prefer to raise questions about a product or order food without any direct human contact. They are “digital natives” used to the equipment and “apps” that are supposed to make life simpler and self-correcting. But here’s the requisite “I remember when.” In my student days soon after California became a state my duties included working in a dormitory with the responsibility ofrunning a modest switchboard. That meant that someone was in charge and on call to help if there was a problem. When they were in wide use, every staffed switchboard at an organization or business was its own local 911. An old switchboard or its electronic equivalent requires a human to connect us to another human. A live body is at the center of the network. No integrated circuit is trying to be a person. We surely lost something when operators and phone receptionists more clearly knitted people to each other.
As the fates would have it, a Politburo-style maneuver failed.
There’s a rude old joke about the disgruntled office worker complaining that he feels like a mushroom. “My bosses usually leave me in the dark, and then they feed me a bunch of sh-t.”
No one likes to be kept out of the loop while consequential decisions that will affect everyone are being made. The rueful remark is a reminder of why the attempt by the Senate leadership to draft health care legislation in secret was so troubling and—in a basic sense—un-American. Healthcare is approaching 20% of the entire American economy. Just thirteen Republican Senators—incredibly, without even one woman among them—drafted the legislation (the misnamed “Better Care Reconciliation Act”) and then sprang it on the rest of us in what was supposed to be an early vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was clearly hoping that the secrecy that shut out the media and most members of his own conference would make passage easier. The press would be blindsided. There would be little time for anyone to read the bill or debate it. There would be no committee mark-ups or hearings, no expert or stakeholder testimony. He knew that some legislators will put party first and sometimes vote on bills they do not understand. As the fates would have it, a Politburo-style maneuver failed.
Some members of the Senate GOP complained of being blindsided. A few others didn’t like the short timetable. So McConnell had no choice but to postpone the vote until after the July 4 break.
There is reason to take heart in the old and honorable American expectation that representatives at all levels of government should do their work with the lights on and the doors open.
So the bill has been dragged into the light where it belongs. Legislating is meant to luxuriate in communication, doubly so in an open society. Now the press is reporting and assessing. The public is weighing in. And interested Americans can consider the consequences of the planned rollbacks and tax breaks that made the proposed legislation so regressive. For the moment, the legislative process has defaulted to a norm of openness and public discussion. We get to actually see the car before we buy it.
There is reason to take heart in the old and honorable American expectation that representatives at all levels of government should do their work with the lights on and the doors open. States have “sunshine laws” that require agencies to publicize their decision-making processes. We have a Freedom of Information Act that sometimes allows close inspection of bureaucratic paper trails. We have a non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that will provide an effects-oriented report. And, of course, we rightly celebrate a First Amendment that gives reporters and citizens the right to ask tough questions to their representatives and register complaints.
It is true that most legislation in the United States is written by small committees of legislators, often with lobbyists submitting drafts as well. And it is equally true that most Americans are not interested or too distracted to notice consequential law-making that will change their lives. But the process is grievously sabotaged if legislators who have pledged to uphold the Constitution usurp its intent by working in secret. Hearings are usually the open window in the process. When even those are curtailed we have good reason to question the honor of the leaders involved.
