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This week’s edition of Embedded, one of the newsletters I subscribe to, was about how customer-service representatives have largely been replaced by chatbots and how frustrating it is to not be able to talk to a real-live (and maybe even helpful) human being — especially as someone who comes from, as writer Kate Lindsay puts it, “a speak-to-the-manager family.”
I, too, am from a speak-to-the-manager family, but here’s where we’re gonna go on a small and confusing (to me) journey into my brain: I am also one of those phone-adverse millennials. I hate making calls, especially cold calls. I bring big “sorry for existing!!!”energy to these kinds of calls, especially outgoing calls during which I must ask for something. Calling a restaurant to order food feels embarrassing for reasons I can’t identify. An awkward phone call in which the reception is also bad? I have stress pits just thinking about it.
This is, obviously, People Pleasing 101 (I am working on it!!!). But then other times, I get what I call the Fight or Flight Override where I can just do it. I can just put on my Phone Voice and rebook the just-cancelled flight from the airport lounge or call that one doctor’s office with the receptionist who is definitely mad at me or do, well, any part of my job.
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Brain journey side quest: I have no problem asking people tough questions on the phone for work. Cool as a cucumber. Sometimes I make the cringe emoji face while I’m doing it but, whatever, no one can see me, I am on the phone. I think when I am able to tack “Winnipeg Free Press” after my name, it makes me feel braver because I imagine all the readers who want to know the answer.
When I am just me, regular citizen consumer, human-to-human customer service is my people-pleasing waterloo. I am a true sugar cube in the rain when faced with having to “disappoint”(?) someone I don’t know who is trying, usually, to keep my money. A humiliating low point: I once made my made-of-stronger-stuff work bestie Erin Lebar call to cancel two different — and very expensive — subscriptions for me because when I tried on my own I ended up keeping them because I felt “bad.” Also, it is diabolical to allow people to sign up for things online and force them to cancel by phone.
Anyway! All this to say, you’d think the advent of outsourcing customer service to chatbots would be great for someone like me (very normal about the phone) but wrong! They are worse. Because they do not help you. And they are not capable of caring about helping you.
Last year, I booked a trip using my points from my credit card. But when I checked the booking reference a few months later to see when my first flight left, it said there was no trip associated with the number. I fired up the chatbot and told it my problem. It said, “I’m sorry, I can’t find that booking reference number.” And then a screen popped up that said chat disabled. I literally made the Surprised Pikachu face. It was like being hung up on.
Turns out my problem was just a glitch in the matrix — my trip appeared in my app later that afternoon and I went on it without incident — but I know a person wouldn’t have caused me such unnecessary panic, once I got over having to place a call, that is. Someone would have tried to figure it out. I can’t charm a chatbot with my little jokes!
I know I was softened by the customer service reps when I tried to cancel those subscriptions because they were actual interactions, and that is probably why you need to call to cancel stuff. When I tried to tell one of the too-many newspapers I subscribe to that I didn’t need this particular one because I work at the newspaper in my city, the customer care person pleasantly said, “Oh, then you must be a person who cares about supporting journalism.” Oof. Hitting me where I live! Masterclass salespersonship! Give that lady a raise! I kept that sub for two more months.
There’s something reassuring about interacting with competence, even if the call doesn’t go your way.
And sometimes it’s not just customer service, but customer care. Like when I made my husband call the receptionist at the emergency vet after hours when my shih tzu, Phoebe, had a frightening allergic reaction to one of her one-year vaccinations and her entire face puffed up. She was so immediately reassuring — she was on speaker — told us what to do in very soothing tones, and her advice worked.
Some vet dot com chatbot could never.
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