Dan Rather
Dan Rather
"HMMM...I didn't understand what you said. Let's try again." This is the moment when what should be an everyday call to a bank, utility, phone company -- what have you takes a dark insidious turn. This is when the sane person is driven over the edge, when one is sorely tempted to send the telephone on a one-way flight out the window. And just what, you might well ask, is your reporter's problem?
Where, good reader, shall I start?
Let's begin with that "Hmmm" a common human-enough interjection, certainly inoffensive in and of itself. Except and here's the electronic heart of the matter it's not a human that is doing the talking. Oh, sure, the voice is that of a recorded Homo Sapien's, but it is just another computer-automated, computer- activated, voice-recognizing piece of software on the line.
RIGID
It understands nothing but a rigid set of responses to a rigid, preprogrammed set of questions, and yet it or rather, its programmer has the gall to give it a voice that manages a pale imitation of human empathy.
The voice says "I." But it is most emphatically not an I; it is an "It." It is just another drop in a river of IT Information Technology.
Things were bad enough when just about every business in the postindustrialised world shifted to those labyrinthine menus, which very helpfully made paying a bill as easy as 1-2-3 but, oddly enough, made lodging a complaint or speaking to a human a matter of high keypad calculus. The shift we are hearing now, though, in the near-universal change to voice-recognition software is not only insufferable for its faux-human affectations it has also made it considerably and commensurately harder to actually get a real, bona fide human being on the phone. Well, your reporter hasn't forgotten that it's Labour Day weekend. And your reporter is aware that, despite many economic indicators that are pointing up, the labour market continues to be sluggish. So without any regard to real-world economic consequences, here's a modest, Labour Day-pegged proposal, which either John Kerry or George Bush should feel free to adopt, if either the Senator or the President is so inclined:
Outlaw the voice-recognition Its. Ban them outright, either by executive fiat, if possible, or by legislative act, if necessary. And mandate that the outfits now using them hire, in their place, real people 'I's', instead of 'It'.
The political upside seems obvious votes from those who would stand to gain employment from such measures, votes from grateful consumers looking for a little bit of human understanding when they call their local bank, business or utility for some customer service.
SUREFIRE WINNER
Nonetheless, it is just possible that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates will decline to take up this surefire winner. Who knows why? Maybe the idea is so retro that it's years ahead of its time. Your reporter is prepared to accept this.
But to all of you out there who have wasted your precious time on the phone, trying to get a computer to understand something that any real person would grasp in an instant, I set forth this question: The IT revolution might well be improving productivity to offset the jobs it has cost but whose productivity is it improving?
In the brave new world of customer "service," you might try asking that of the next It you get on the line.
Hello? Hello?
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster