Ditch the contactless checkout and the automated phoneline
To the Expositor:
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been fortunate to take on two corporate clients that I’ve been pursuing for a long time.
Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
Papers need to be shuffled. Signatures need to be authorized.
I like to pretend I don’t count my chickens before the egg even shows up.
But I do.
I’m a bit of an optimistic idiot that way.
A telling aspect of these two separate decisions was their almost identical stated reasoning for agreeing to work with me.
“When I phone, I know we can meet.”
And as one of these individuals added.
“I also know where you live.”
Of course that fellow was teasing me. But he wasn’t joking.
Both of these locations of commerce have fully staffed and welcoming reception areas. When you walk in you are greeted. When you call you are greeted.
When I graduated and leaped into the maelstrom of the working world, the aggressive outsourcing of face to face contact was well under way with answering services and call centres. Then came a hurricane of emails, oddly auto-corrected texts, photogenic zoom calls and now we have AI pretending to be useful.
Press 1 for French 2 for English. Press 3 for a guaranteed pain in the ass.
Pure joy.
This was all done under the guise of efficiency. Somebody got to report to somebody that money was saved. ‘Was it?’ I wonder. The price of a salary to the cost of a lost opportunity to help someone.
We often come across the expression that people resist change. That’s not always my observation. People are happy to change if they are able to feel that it is worth it. New has to be advantageous, not just expensively different. Being left behind we learn is often an illusion.
Nothing beats personal contact.
Nor likely ever will.
Anything else, no matter how convenient and necessary, is just a shallow simulacrum.
It’s amazing how communicative a simple handshake or hug can be.
We silly humans despite our comical configurations and laughable programming are still the ultimate technology.
At least for each other.
Enjoy yourselves,
Douglas Miller
Sudbury
