There was a time before Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone systems, when you talked to a real person, instead of pressing “1 for English, 2 for Spanish,” and navigating through a tree of options to route your call to a recorded answer. Ah, the good old days, when services were not so complex, and options were not so abundant.
Even today, you can usually get to a real, live person, if you are persistent enough, and don’t make any mistakes in your selections that make you hang up and start over, which happens to me often!
I have noticed a new pattern of behavior from the customer service folks I eventually get to talk to that I find troubling. It is, that they don’t really get to talk to me. Our conversations are always recorded and monitored for “quality assurance,” and their words are completed scripted. When I try to engage in a real conversation or offer a new perspective for their consideration, I get the same response over and over again, read to me from a script. Although I am delighted to have a person to talk to, I realize that I really don’t. The person has no authority to talk to me, let alone the authority to resolve my issue or complaint.
Customer service has become a robotic activity, which robs employees of any real human conversation with customers. I understand the business need for correct and consistent answers, but I always leave these conversations feeling unsatisfied, often frustrated and usually sorry for the employee whose job it was to have a “conversation” with me.
It seems like there should be a way to ensure quality customer service, with accurate and consistent information, without robbing employees of all creativity and expression that flows from natural human conversations. Certainly, this would be more engaging for the employees and a better service for customers, which would also benefit the business.
For ideas on how to move from an engineering model of management to one that promotes human creativity, engagement and real conversations, see my book, Management Culture, at mgmtculture.com.
Denise Moreland 
Utterly resonates with me! Our tele’communications’ organisations have systemically structured a process which makes it clear they want you to go away and not communicate! Not the fault of the front-liners with their poorly written scripts.
The only way I can respond is by not paying their bills until the last moment. Let the organisation suffer the roundabout they put me through so many times (eg telling them my date of birth four times on one call).
I admire you for trying to tackle the problem. My view is that the ‘killer app’ organisation (probably trained by you) will come and take a massive competitive advantage from doing this right.