The Power of Voice is Important to Me
Technology moves along quickly and it’s invasive, you only need to see how far mobile phones, tablets and Smart technologies have come in the last few years and how and where they are used. Most homes, places of work and educational settings are tech heavy so it’s no surprise that technology is used in almost everything we do in our day to day life and it’s no different when we need to contact customer services both over the phone and online either. Sometimes it’s easy to see why some people think that our voices are being replaced by technology, but is this really the case or is the power of a human voice still more superior?
If you have a smart device at home you will be familiar with asking your Alexa, Siri or assistant a question or asking it to complete a task such as playing your favourite song, telling you information or updating your shopping list. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are all AI bots and although amusing and helpful when you ask them to rap, tell a joke, sing and answer a question you don’t know the answer to they can also be impersonal too as quite often everyone gets the same response when they ask the device the same question.
The same can definitely be said for the AI voices heard when you try to ring many companies and helplines or the auto-replies you get when you are trying to contact a company online. I get that they are popular with companies as it saves both time and money for them as they can relay common issues in pre-recorded messages depending on the query that someone has relayed to the bot. In one sense this frees up actual people for the bigger and more complex queries but it also takes away the personal service you receive too.
I find there is nothing worse than having to spend time answering security information to a robot to then have to repeat it over and over again or to get to the end of the process and find that there are no actual people on the end of the line available to take my call. I then have to go through it all over again when I retry to make the call.
Long gone are the days of calling a switchboard and speaking to a person after a couple of rings. Even ringing the doctor or the boys school there is an automated service that you have to listen to and press buttons to get to the right person or department and if you’ve tried ringing HMRC lately you will know how annoying it is trying to get to a person to speak to. The other week it took me 10 minutes to get through to the hold queue just by the AI bots wanting security questions answered and wanting information about my call.
Although I don’t particularly like AI there are some advantages, as it
- Does all the tedious and repetitive jobs a person would find boring
- Saves money in the long run as you don’t need to employ as many customer service personnel
- Can answer some queries quicker with an automated message
There are also a few disadvantages too as the service,
- Is often impersonal and generic
- Can give inaccurate information if the original query is vague
- Can be costly to set up
- Lacks creativity and queries may go unanswered if the “usual” answers aren’t correct in certain instances
- Waiting times can be longer due to fewer members of staff
In a nutshell, I personally prefer to talk to a person rather than a machine on the phone and when emailing or using a contact us form. For me, it saves time and I get an answer right away to my query. I know people feel differently but I don’t think you’ll change my mind anytime soon.
Do you prefer talking to an actual person when you ring a customer services line? i’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
This is a collaborative post
