Are automated services there to help or hinder?

Richard, I agree with you; some automated services are better and quicker but many are not.
I bank with First Direct; in my experience it is actually quicker to ring up their excellent customer services centre and get them to transfer money etc for me, rather than do it myself by logging in to my account online which is increasingly like breaking into an online Bank of England gold vault.
Re: parking, you may not know that, in London, Westminster Council started charging motorbikes to park about 3 years ago; this can only be done by automated payment as obviously there’s nowhere secure to stick confimation of what you’ve paid into a ticket machine on the motorbike. This was challenged unsuccessfully all the way to the High Court on a number of grounds by http://notobikeparkingtax.com, including the fact it requires those parking to have with them a mobile phone. Probably most people do, but nevertheless it is a strange precondition of parking that you have to have a mobile phone with you. Of course, Westminster Council has a known track record for making as much money as possible from parking – their latest wheeze is to try and charge for Sunday and evening parking.
So, Richard, next time you are on stage and a mobile phone rings it will probably be because the theatre goer brought their mobile phone with them to pay for their parking and is getting a text message to tell them it’s expired and they’ve just got a parking ticket!

Depends who’s doing it. Government / supermarkets and the like, I wouldn’t trust it.
Me doing it, I would trust it.

Says the man who can get the automated checkouts to go mad within 3 items or less. And how many IT projects do we hear the government have fouled up on.

Body scanners in airports are being banned in some countries due to the potential cancer risk. Not much testing there

It all depends on ho much money and time someone is prepared to throw at something. And in this day and age, no one is prepared to do a quality job.

Automatic systems seem to fail at least 50% of the time and even when they work they always take more time to reach an answer.
Nearly everybody I know dislikes them.

To Mark – re Westminster Council quietly bringing in motorbike parking charges, my son at 22 got caught by this one for parking in Westminster in an area where he had been parking his bike for free
for about 3 years, near his university. He challenged it, letters went backwards and forwards, and after getting to the point where he was threatened by bailiffs, he had to pay a huge amount of money in the end as Westminster did not suspend mounting fines during the time it took to challenge them. Mmmm.
Also, automated everything it seems – from Richard Wilson’s experiences with automated parking charges to having to call an assistant to a supermarket auto-pay machine if you want to buy a bottle of wine as well as groceries (so it’s not faster as they are so busy dealing with other customer difficulties before they can get to you) – nearly all of us hate automation. Yes, the only benefit I can see is to the companies or public bodies concerned – I see little or no benefit to us who have to suffer these systems. I wasted more than an hour recently trying to get through to the correct dept of my local council – not Westminster I’m pleased to say! – my call kept getting rerouted back to customer services call centre when I was trying to reach someone working in the relevant dept to ask a question that customer services did not know the answer to. Very frustrating – and expensive, as it’s a (hated) 0845 number.

Routine services like telephone banking can work extremely well.

There is nothing more annoying than going through all the button pressing when you know that you need to speak to a human being. All service providers should offer this option at the start. With some organisations, it is easy to be transferred by not pressing a button, but sometimes this just terminates the call.

I think most automated phone systems are horrible. Sorry wrong dept you should have pressed 1>4>2 not 1>2>3 I can’t help you let me just put you in another queue…….20 minutes later…… Sorry you need 1>2>3 not 1>4>2. I’m sure companies do this to stop customers cancelling/complaining.

The only exception I’ve found to this is Barclays. Enter 0000000 for account a couple of times and when the person answers they are polite and helpful, it is very rare (for me anyway) that they can’t deal with a problem directly.

Ever rung an automated number and asked to “enter your account number so we can transfer you to the correct dept”, only to have a “human” answer the phone and ask whats your account number, And 99% of the time when I say I’ve just had to enter it, the reply is “it doesn’ get passed to us”. Another fine semi automated system.

Dreadful, absolutely dreadful systems. We have one in York. It would be easy to phone up and park if I was sitting at a desk, but in the street in the dark and in a hurry they are absolutely impossible to cope with. I always take a lot of coins instead…… And I am a computer literate technophile who does everything by email & computer.

I have used automated parking in the UK and found it to be far more convenient than having to find the coins required for the ticket machines – it was also cheaper! In Ireland I have also registered for automatic tolling on the M50 motorway – again far more convenient than having to remember to phone and pay each time!

I still find that the most annoying automed services (sorr, alleged services) ever are automated telephone queues. I have just spent 15 minutes yet again going through a phone menu and then waiting for a human on Game’s rip off 0871 number. Gave up after 15 minutes of listening to drivel music amnd still no human.

Mobile phones and other devices with minituarised screens are difficult for older people because of short sight deterioration which is virtually universal. Another problem will arise when one-time codes, sent by text message, will be needed to confirm financial transactions.

I only use these sytems in London (where my son lives) I set up an accounttook ages just like Richard.
Two months later tried to use it again about 4 streets away and found I was in a different borough and had to do it again. They have Transport for London, why not Parking for London. Sort it out Boris!

Automated telephone services are becoming more and more frustrating. It used to be that if you couldn’t find the service you required from a short menu you either held on or pressed a number to be redirected to a real person but that seems to have gone. Now, if your query does not fit into their catalogue of categories (which you run through twice just to be sure) you have no way of reaching a human being other than to press any number and hope that the person at the other end will be helpful and transfer you to the correct department. What makes it even more frustrating is that there is often a succession of different menus to wade through before you get to a person.

And we wonder why there are so many unemployed. It is better to speak to almost anyone in the organisation than to a computer, at least then they can refer you to the CORRECT person!

Automated telephone systems that have not provided a ‘person’ option are my bug -bear. I would not be ringing the Customer Services(sic) at all were it not that I have a problem that requires some thought and a considered response from a human-brain equipped representative of that organisation.

The worse of these and one which should be banned is paying for parking by mobile phone. Cash is legal tender for all debts and yet councils like Westminster make this impossible. Not only do they make you use a mobile phone in the street where it can be flipped out of your hand and stolen, but they charge you a handling fee for the pleasure. They also disenfranchise those of us that chose not to have mobile phone. This is outrageous and I feel potentially illegal. It is also a way of further rolling out monitoring of individuals by the state- by making you pay with a credit card, you are flagging your location.

Why is this question even being asked?
Of course it isn’t for the benefit of the general public.
Of course its to reduce costs and, where applicable, increase profits, for the ‘phone companies as well, I guess.
We’re being encouraged to make ourselves increasingly redundant.
Who’s doing this?
Don’t they think it applies equally to them, admittedly, perhaps not immediately, but inevitably sooner or later?
Arrogant, or just stupid?
Its like self-regulation for the financial sector, which we were also expected to accept and believe without question, an insult to our intelligence.
Something more pertinent.
What about parking ticket machines which don’t give change?
Legalised robbery? I think so, does anyone else?
Thank you for listening, I feel better now.

Those who get frustrated with never-ending phone menus of “Press 1 for x, 2 for y” etc should look at http://gethuman.com/numbers/uk.

And of course never use 0845 or 0870 type numbers if you have to pay for them. Look at http://www.saynoto0870.com instead!

Unfortunately, too many organisations see customer service as a burden and a financial cost, rather than as an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with their customers. It’s abundantly clear from the responses to Richard’s report how important it is for companies to get this right.

Automated systems can save organisations thousands of pounds and this is the main reason for their implementation. But at the same time, if they are not fit for purpose, they ultimately risk alienating and frustrating the very people they are meant to serve.

When you contact an organisation, you want to access the information or service you need, quickly and easily, without having to repeat the same information each time. When intelligently designed around the customer’s needs, automated systems are very reliable and they do actually speed up and simplify the contact process. Unfortunately, as the comments above prove, too often this is simply not the case. Ironically, it’s often the customer that gets forgotten when customer service functions are designed, with organisations focusing on how such systems meet their needs rather than those of their customers. Given the advances with the technology itself, there is no absolutely no why organisations cannot get this right today.

Fran Fish, VoxGen