Here it is. Living with COVID-19 year 3.
It goes without saying that many things in the workplace and in life generally have morphed into something no generation has ever seen before. The plague of the century, the dastardly disease COVID-19 has had its effect everywhere. As we move with cautious steps into the year of the water rabbit I have noticed certain things about the “new normal” that I cannot pass by without comment.
Customer Service is one of them.
What on earth is happening to customer service? I am well aware that many jobs– especially on the low end of the pay scale –have become totally automated in response to businesses’ inability or choice to not staff certain positions with live humans. Even I have gotten used to not seeing real cashiers and breezing through the self-service checkout at the grocery store.
There must be more opportunities for voice actors somehow. So many times my first contact with a business is an automated voice on the customer service line asking me to click 1,2, or 3 to get something done. What I want seldom gets done and to add insult to injury, I get kicked back to the beginning. Around and around and around.
I call any government service state or federal to deal with an employment issue. Pick your choice. The agency I want assistance from goes by a name that can be confused with another agency’s name that has a totally different function. I wash breakfast dishes while waiting to speak to an “agent” who refers me to another number where I will wait until it’s time to do dinner dishes.
I have worked in customer service-client happiness-CSR or whatever retail floor sales positions have been renamed these days for over one-quarter of a century and come to this conclusion: there is no substitute for real live human contact.
Victoree's INDUSTRIAL MYTHOLOGY 