CommentsFIRST PERSON--As much as artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved in the last few years to theoretically make communication easier, a rather opposite and counter intuitive reality of how this technology is actually being applied to not communicate has become a yet unaddressed reality.
Artificial intelligence is now being used to insulate the people running companies- and their sole concern of maximizing profits- from accountability to their clients. Artificial intelligence is now the mechanism that has created an unaccountable stonewalling high tech buffer between those running companies and their customers.
In calling a service provider to lodge a complaint about things like how you have been overcharged or how the service doesn't work in some way, one can spend hours on hold or listening to inappropriate computer generated options that in no way address the specific problem you are having with the service. This is not an oversight by the service provider, but rather a well calculated way of overcharging or failing to deliver the contracted for reasonable level of service the customer has paid for, based on the assumption that the customer will ultimate get tired of trying to get help and just accept the dysfunction as the now acceptable standard operating procedure. And given that the other suppliers of these same goods and services are most likely doing the same thing, the customer is left without any recourse or viable alternative for meaningful communication with their service providers.
Service and product providers who truly care about their customers do something as easy- but more costly- as allowing their customers to leave a phone number, email address or text, where these providers engage themselves to get back to the customer in a reasonable amount of time, so the customer doesn't have to often wait interminable hours on hold being shuttled and often disconnected from one series of inappropriate options to another.
And this practice of giving the customer no viable alternative means of communication with the service or goods supplier is not just a commercial phenomenon. Recently, I sent a certified letter, return receipt requested, with the post office. When I received the green delivery verification card, which was attached to the letter, it was not signed by the addressee. If not signed for, the mailman should have not delivered the letter. But here I was with a blank unsigned delivery verification card and no way of knowing, showing or proving that the documents had been delivered.
The phone number given to me by my local post office to address this problem didn't work. Neither did the online USPS site, which made it impossible to communicate with the USPS by any means. After over an hour of trying to send an email to USPS in search of an answer, I was finally able to get an email sent with my complaint from this site that didn't initially function. This made me wonder if anybody from USPS had every attempted to use this site to see if it actually works- clearly they haven't.
So, no matter how much you are told, "We value our customers," clearly the worsening reality of endless waiting on inaccessible phone or online sites gives a completely different message.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].)
-cw