It’s pointless having human helpers if they talk like robots

Dios los bendiga, Alberto Garzón! Spain’s consumer affairs minister has hit upon a policy that surely deserves to be copied the world over: making it a legal right for consumers to speak to a human being, rather than a robot, on customer service calls. When we’ve purchased a company’s goods or services and things go wrong, it should be the norm to be able to speak to a nice person who can fix things. Yet this simple desire is very rarely met.

Go online to find a phone number and “Chat with us” is the command that pops up on our screens, but it’s not a chat at all. The messages are signed by “Bot” – there is no pretence that it’s a person. By the time Bot has asked you the name of your first cat, your proudest sporting achievement and where you went to school, the sun’s gone down and you haven’t come close to discussing what’s wrong.

If, as I did this week, you type, “I have to go to Pilates. Can we do this tomorrow?”, the Bot replies, “Of course, we can continue.” Except it has no idea what “continue” means. In Bot’s language, “we can continue” is a synonym for “we will pretend we have never heard from you before and ask you the same old questions all over again”.

If you do manage to discover the deliberately elusive and paradoxically labelled “Contact Us” telephone number, you might naively imagine that “us” means living, breathing humans, buffing up their “Here to help” badges and keen to rush to your aid with practical and knowledgeable solutions. Perhaps a “normal” conversation, with a sense of humour, a dash of empathy – “Oh, poor you!”, “I can see that must be annoying,” and “The same thing happened to me.”

Hopes are dashed as you get through to Bot’s phone line cousin, either asking you to “state your problem” (which they never understand properly) or offering an endless list of choices, none of which fit your needs and should really include “Press nine if you’ve lost the will to live”.

Convince Bot’s cousin to let you speak to a human and off you go again. “Your call is important to us” drones a disinterested and disembodied actor’s voice as Enya’s Orinoco-bloodyFlow pipes down the line. “You are currently second in the queue,” they tell you. Funny that I’m always second or third but whoever’s number one has been on the line since the previous Thursday. Why don’t they ever say “You’re 24th in the queue. Make a sandwich. Have a bath …”? It’s enough to make you smash the phone in frustration, until you remember you’ll have to talk to another Bot to get a replacement.

After a few hours, anaesthetised by Enya, the phone stuck to my cheek, a voice suddenly says, “Hello…” By then, I’ve almost forgotten why I called. But at last – a human, a problem-solver! Except it isn’t. They have a check list. “Have you switched it on?” it begins. Obviously, you really can’t lose your temper with them, because it’s not their fault. This is “company procedure”. So passing a law to make it compulsory for real humans to talk to customers means nothing if companies continue training their staff to speak and respond like the very robots we all hate.

Now and then, though, we do experience real “customer service”. A sympathetic voice answers and sorts things out. When that happens, I’m tearful with surprise and gratitude. If Senor Garzón can make that the norm in Spain, I’ll be on the next flight.