Automated Helplines, and Call Centres

The Automated Helpline. Which really means "Automatically Helps Whatever Business or Service it is Supposed to Cover, Whilst Systematically Pissing Off Any Customer Who Dares to Ring".

We've all had the unfortunate experience of having to use these dreaded things. You ring the helpline number, and the phone is answered after only three rings. Great! Then you realise that you are connected to the recorded message, and your heart sinks.
“Good afternoon, and thank you for calling Joe Soap Ltd. In order to assist our call centre staff deal with your query quickly, please enter your sixteen digit account number on your keypad and press star”
Tappety tappety tap tap tap, and then you hear,
"We are sorry. That number has not been recognised. Please try again”
Tappety tap tap tap tappety tap.
“Thank you. If you are calling about a sales query, please press 1. If you are calling about a billing or account query, please press 2. If you are calling about a technical fault or breakdown, please press 3. For all other queries, please press 4. To hear this list of options again, please press 5”.
You press the relevant number, only to hear,
“Thank you. All our call centre representatives are busy right now, but we will get to you shortly. Please hold the line”.
You settle in for the long haul, and after a couple of minutes you hear,
“We are sorry to keep you waiting. A call centre representative will be with you shortly. Please hold the line. Your call is important to us”
You have been on the phone for 10 minutes and haven’t actually spoken to anyone yet!


If you do manage to get through to a real person at the end of all the Press 1, Press 2, Press 3 nonsense, you often find them uncaring, unfriendly, or just impossible to understand. I know that call centre staff have a pretty much thankless job, and are not especially well-paid considering all they get to do all day is listen to people moan and complain. However, they chose to do that job, so they have to accept that unfortunately the are in the ‘front line’. They are the only human contact we plebby customers have with the fat-cat companies, so they have to expect a certain amount of flak.
What we don’t want to hear is somebody who, fair enough, may be having a bad day anyway, but they then let their bad mood come across in their conversation with you.
You can be in the middle of a conversation with a call centre, and suddenly the line goes dead. It may be a technical fault, but cynically, I can’t help but think that they just get fed up with you, and pull the plug.
If they do remain on the phone, they often say that they will deal with your problem, but they will have to speak to somebody else about it first, and could they call you back. How annoying to be left waiting and then receive no come-back call. So then you have to ring them back, and you are bound to get someone different on the phone, and so have to repeat everything all over again.
Sometimes you ring up and it sounds like they’re having a party at the other end. You are connected, but no-one answers you for a while, and all you can hear is chatting and laughter in the background as they discuss what they got up to in the pub last night with their mates.



2006 seems to have been the year of companies outsourcing their call centre work to India to save money. Then a whole new raft of problems exists. They may not be as discourteous as some English call centre people, but that is about all you can say about them. The Indians speak Pidgin English, usually reading from a script, and if they have to deal with a complicated problem that they are not used to, they either get it wrong, or have to pass your call on to someone else. You feel there is little point in trying to explain your problem in detail because they just don’t understand the nuances of the English language or culture. Add to that the fact that they are very difficult to understand, and the whole experience becomes one of frustration and annoyance. Surely this is not how the big companies like to make their customers feel? Ultimately, I can only see it losing them money, as customers just ditch them for someone else.
(This is an aside grumble, but why do people from other countries not learn inflection and accent when they learn the language? One of the things that was drummed into us at school when learning French was that you do NOT use an English accent when you speak French. So for instance, if you are saying, ‘La plume de ma tante’, you DON’T say in a cockney accent, ‘La ploom de ma tont’)
Hats off to the online company eSure. They started using Indian call centres in 2004 but they have had so many customer complaints about them that they are bringing their call centre work back to the UK. Someone there must have realised that the money they saved in outsourcing was being quickly outstripped by lost customer sales.

My worst experience recently was ironically with the phone company Talk Talk. I had switched to them some months earlier with the promise of cheaper calls and line rental, and everything was fine until I wanted to move house. I thought I would give them fair warning, so rang their 'helpline', (an oxymoron if ever there was one!). I was led through the mind-numbing process of listening and responding to "If you want this, press 1, if you want that, press 2..." etc. When I did choose the number that corresponded to my query, I was cut off. I tried a second time, and the same thing happened. I rang again, and chose a different number, in an effort to get through to somebody. After waiting and listening to awful musak for 5 minutes, eventually somebody answered. When I told them of my problems trying to get the department I wanted from the automated answerphone, he apologised and said it wasn't a problem. He would put me through. Back to the dial tone again!

I left it a couple of days, because it had annoyed me so, and I didn't want to repeat the experience, but reasoned to myself that perhaps it was just a technical error, and that it must now be fixed. On ringing, and going through the usual rigmarole of tapping this and that number, I eventually got a call centre representative on the other end, in India! "Alor may nem is George ow may I help you todeh?" What I wanted to say was that your name is no more 'George' than mine is Hasmukh, but I decided not to. Obviously someone from the higher echelons of the company had probably hit on the bright idea that English people would feel more comfortable if they heard an English name at the other end, so had re-named all their Indian staff. They must think we were all born yesterday.

Anyway, I spoke to 'George', and told him that I was moving house in three weeks time, and that I would like to transfer my number and service to the new address. I would still need the phone at this address for the time being, but I was just giving them advance notice. He took my phone number down, ran some checks, then told me that I wasn't on the system. Had I had a new number recently, he wondered. No, I told him I had had this number for about 15 years with BT, and that I had been paying a monthly bill to Talk Talk on this number, so they must have a record of it. He told me to wait, and put me on hold. Minutes passed, and when he did come back, he said that it shouldn't be a problem, and that they would send me confirmation in the post. Okay. Done.

The next day I went to use the phone, only to discover I had a completely dead line. My internet was still working though...strange. Then the fun began. I had to phone Talk Talk's freephone number, but as my home phone wasn't working, I had to use my mobile and get charged for it. This time I eventually got through to 'Jane' in India. She apologised and promised to find out what had happened. I was put on hold again. She came back after speaking to her manager, and told me that my home number would be back on in three days to a week! Unhappy, but resigned to the fact, I thanked her and rang off.

A week passed. No phone. Ten days. No phone.
I rang them again, on my mobile again at my expense. Press buttons. Wait. India again. I couldn't understand the woman at all this time, even after asking her about three times to repeat what she was saying. Sensing my impatience, she decided, "I pot you trrru to may miniger". He was not much better, but I re-iterated my sorry story to him, and he promised he would sort it out, but that it may take three days to a week to re-connect me!

I never did get re-connected at the old address. They sent me two duplicate letters on the same day, telling me that they could not transfer my number to the new address because
a) It was not a valid BT number,
b) It was a new number, not yet registered or
c) It was a cable number.
If I phoned their helpline with the correct answer, they would be able to follow it up from there. I phoned them. An Indian man didn't understand me this time, so told me he would put me through to somebody else. Suddenly, I was speaking to a girl with the broadest Irish accent I'd ever heard. She told me that I would have to speak to someone on the technical side, and she put me through, this time to a broad Geordie girl! I was actually laughing at this point. She told me that it should be possible to transfer my number to the new address, but it would take about three weeks!
I would have been moved in for a fortnight by then, so I told her not to bother. I cancelled my account with them. For a communications company, I find it ironic that it was virtually impossible to communicate with anyone.
Verdict: Talk Talk don't Listen Listen!


I later phoned BT to enquire why Talk Talk kept telling me that my phone number was not a valid BT number. The man told me that it definitely was, but that if I wanted to transfer the number to my new address, I would firstly have to have it reconnected at my old address! He said BT could do it for me, but the whole process would take up to three weeks! I told him that I didn't necessarily need to hold on to that number. It didn't have any sentimental value or anything, and incidentally, how long would it take to install a new number at the new address. Also, could they provide Broadband, and how soon would that take? He told me that I could have a new phoneline plus broadband, plus free hub, free hub phone and free evening and weekend calls for 23 quid a month, up and running in five days! Guess which service I am using as I type?