Answering the phone says a lot about a business

Our company does many things that are new – like cutting edge. We were first to market with our local podcasts. We were – back in 1995 – one of the first to market online with Internet coupons.

Ha, I still own these two domains: Couponscoupons.com and CouponsRus.com! But I digress.

While we try hard to stay “current,” we also do a lot of things the old fashion way, like answering the phone. The rule is that when you call Appen, a human (her name is Jade or sometimes Heidi or sometimes Ray) will answer your call by the second ring if not sooner. It is one of my pet peeves. If you are going to take your time to call us, the least thing we can do is respect your time and answer your call personally, and fast.

We get a lot of calls sometimes. And I will tell you that we are probably batting 95 percent answering them by the second ring. We don’t always operate our business as well as we want to, but it is not from lack of trying or a lack of caring.

I would say that 85 percent of the time I am calling a business – other than Appen – the person who answers is a machine, and I have to listen to a machine tell me what to do. “Press 1 for sales. Press 2 for service. Press 3 for accounting. Press 4 if it is Wednesday (because we are closed). Press 5 if you want to relisten to this list. If you know the extension of the person with whom you wish to speak, press 9. If you want to wait for a long time to talk to a person, press 0 now.”

About half the time, when you press one of those numbers you get another round of questions that demand answers.

I can think of only a couple things that drive me crazier than this. One is when you press the customer service prompt, you are transferred to India to someone who reads a script and never, ever strays from what the script says no matter what you have just said. The other is those losers who harass other people on roundabouts because they are in a hurry or are having a bad hair day, or because they are just assess – like the late model dark blue or gray Dodge Ram who blasted that white BMW in front of me on the roundabout out near Freemanville Road area today. One hundred percent loser in a hurry to be a bigger loser and probably go home and beat his wife or kids or maybe his dog. In a hurry? Not. But I digress.

I recently had a test done at Emory. My insurance covered the bill but apparently there was a deductible that I still needed to pay even though it was my understanding that I had already met my deductible. I tried to call Emory to make sure I really owed that $100. I tried, and

I tried, and I tried. It was like going into a maze with lots of turns, blindfolded and walking with your hands and trying to get to the other end. Ultimately, I concluded that contacting someone who could help me on this outstanding bill was impossible and that maybe that text or email they were sending me was legitimate, so I caved and sent $130 to a machine online that said I owed Emory $130. Note – the bill went from $100 to $130 when I waited to pay it for about a week. I am sorry Emory, but it is virtually impossible to deal with your administrative “system,” and I use that term loosely. It is hard to have confidence in any business that fails so miserably in something as simple and basic as taking a phone call from someone who wants to pay a bill. Amazon does it right. Why can’t you?

How a business manages the phones tells a ton about the business. Technology very often pushes businesses further away from their customers – further away from meaningful communication with customers. Businesses think that they save money by having a “system” that makes a caller jump through hoops to ultimately – maybe – route the call to the desired person. It never ceases to amaze me that these businesses never seem to value the caller’s time – as if the caller’s time has no value at all. What are they thinking?

This “phone thing” is, to me, just an example of this trending disconnect between people that gets worse every day. It has something to do with values. It has something to do with how much we do or do not respect each other. The disconnect manifests itself everywhere every day –from on roundabouts to in schools, to in government, to in the quality of our health care, to our relationship with a neighbor.

It is all part of the noise that surrounds us at all times, and it can be hard to notice unless you step back and ask yourself, “Wait, why am I in such a hurry? Why am I sending that email instead of picking up the phone. Why am I harassing a complete stranger on a roundabout just because I am not having a good day? Why am I posting hurtful stuff on social media?”

We can continue to digress toward some truly dark unknown condition, but I believe we still have time to reverse some of this contamination that technology has generated and return to a way or life – an attitude – that makes us healthier, wiser and happier. But that means disconnecting from a lot of the technology – purposely, and with deliberate intent. It means reconnecting with others, personally. It starts with how we treat others and how we want to be treated. We don’t want technology to interfere with that – ever.

So, answer your phone, personally.