Margaret Runsewe has taken a lot of things in stride during her nearly 93 years.
By the time she was four, she had learned to weigh candy and answer the phone in the little shop her mother ran in England. She started working full-time in a malt factory when she was 14.
During the Second World War, she served in an anti-aircraft emplacement, where she operated the computer that predicted the height of incoming enemy aircraft so gunners could set the fuses to explode at a certain altitude.
As a pregnant war bride, she spent two weeks in a crowded ship crossing the Atlantic, and witnessed the consternation of the crew when the ship brushed against a mine as it entered Halifax harbour. (The mine didn’t explode, to everyone’s relief.)
After 10 years of a bad marriage, she was deserted by her abusive husband and raised her three children on her own, delivering the Daily Colonist on King George Terrace to put food on the table. She has had a tough life, but she laughs a lot and doesn’t complain about much.
Except for automated phone systems.
“I am fed up to the teeth and beyond,” she says of the way government and businesses use phone systems. “It is very seldom one gets a human being answering the phone.”
With her mobility limited, Runsewe is trying to find more suitable accommodations in Langford that will allow her to get out for some exercise and fresh air. In that and other matters, she has had to tangle with government agencies and other bureaucracies. Most of the time, that means the phone is not answered by a person, but by a recording.
“It’s ‘leave a message, leave a message, we’ll get back to you,’ but they never do,” she says.
It’s a situation that leaves her feeling angry, frustrated and helpless.
Runsewe speaks for a lot of people. Who hasn’t, at one time or another, shared those feelings? Who hasn’t illogically yelled insults at a recorded voice that blandly entices the caller into a maze of button-pushing that leads nowhere? Who hasn’t wished (C’mon, at least for a second or two!) that one of those buttons could set off a minor explosion at the other end? Phone rage afflicts us all at one time or another.
It’s handy, this technology that lets us communicate instantly with each other, any time, any place. It’s amazing how we can transfer vast amounts of information, images and sounds through tiny devices.
But systems designed to be bridges of communication too easily become walls. Digital recordings take the place of human interaction. Voicemail makes it easy to dodge difficult calls. Pushing buttons substitutes for real customer service.
And all this has spawned one of the most aggravating insults to human intelligence, the recorded message that begins so many telephone transactions: “Your call is important to us.” Makes you want to hang up then and there, doesn’t it?
Automated phone systems allow businesses to take calls after hours. In many cases, they can be used to transfer information or complete transactions quickly and conveniently.
But sometimes the convenience is one-sided, and not in favour of the caller. Call centres are designed to handle large volumes of calls as efficiently as possible, but efficiency and effectiveness are not always the same thing. In a U.S. survey, 70 per cent of respondents said they had “experienced rage” in trying to get customer complaints resolved.
Automation should be our servant. The rage happens when we think we are being pushed around by uncaring machines and unfeeling circuitry, no matter how efficient the system might be.
“I don’t want to leave a message,” says Margaret Runsewe. “I want to talk to a person.”
She’s right. No amount of robotic sincerity can ever take the place of a real human voice asking: “How may I help you?”
