Trouble With The Customer Service Hotline Of Today

BEFORE, when something in our house is out of order, we would have to go to the relevant departments where we bought it from, to try our luck, in getting it fixed.

Then the telephone was invented, and everything changed. In the 1960s, call centres emerged.

Though touch-tone dialing was introduced in 1962, it did not come into use until the 1980s. At that time, most of the customer service hotlines were still attended to by the operator. We just told the operator what issues we are facing, and they will then connect us to the right department and the right personnel.

Then companies started outsourcing in 1980, to some low labor costs offshore companies such as Pakistan and India. This is an increasing trend these days, and this is when all the issues encountered by some of us today popped up.

Nowadays, when we call the customer service hotline, we are then immediately connected to this touch-tone dialing machine, which asked us to press 1 for one thing, to press 2, 3, 4, 5,6 and so on for another, and then to press 0 to speak to the customer service personnel.

During the process, we usually have to wait for at least 5 minutes, and this can be troublesome for those who are hard-pressed for time.

In the process, sometimes we press the wrong touchpad, and then we have to start the whole process again. And this could take us anything from 30 or 45 minutes to 1 hour, and the problem may still not be solved.

I have in fact encountered a few times that after the customer service personnel picked up my call, he told me that he is not the appropriate person or the right department to contact. He then put me on hold to transfer me to the correct department. Then somehow during the waiting, the call suddenly got cut off and I have to start all over again.

So I would suggest that before we are being connected to the customer services department nowadays, perhaps there could be a telephone operator such as those in the 1980s to answer to us first, so as to make sure that we are speaking to the right person from the relevant department.

Or perhaps the authorities could suggest ways on how to solve this issue, which can be rather annoying at times, for one who needs the issue to be fixed as soon as possible.