Have spent quite a bit of my morning on hold.
I see no reason not to tell you who I was on hold with, surely no one is going to want to sue me for being indiscrete, especially if it’s true? The two companies were the ANZ bank (30 minutes), and Air NZ (a total of over an hour invested there, although to be fair 20 minutes of that was actually having my issue dealt with.) What do these companies have in common, apart from being ostensibly Kiwi(ish)? Obviously they both have a sneering disregard for their clients, and an overweening faith in AI being able to deal with any problem. Surely by firing all their call centre people before ensuring AI is up to it they’ve put the cart before the horse, or should I say, profits over customer service. Both are also in the ‘too big to fail’ bracket.
In stark contrast, I’ve just got off the phone to Main Freight (naming names again) to organize the delivery of some furniture I bought online. A human being answered the phone within 10 seconds of it ringing, and my issue was dealt with painlessly and within a minute. Why has this business model gone out of date? I don’t want to sound like a whingeing Boomer, afraid of change, but surely progress ought to involve some degree of things getting better, right?