Hello? Is that, cambridgeshire, earth?

[jack]

I always try to make my rants on phone menus interesting, and it seems I always fail. Everyone hates them, why are my parodies not funny, when people applaud the weirdest of other things I write?

A.*bring bring*
Q. Hello! You've reached Acme, corp. How can we help you?
A. I'm sorry, my foo is blarging.
Q. Your foo? Oh, you should probably talk to the cambridge office.
A. OK.
Q. *disconnects you*
A. *redials*
Q. Hello! You've reached Acme, corp. How can we help you?
A. Hi! I think I should speak to the cambridge office. My foo is blarging.
Q. Of course.
A. *bring bring*
Q. Mwgseep thwockpop shaft.
A. Hello?
Q. THWOCKPOP! Shaft <> greefle! SNWWAAAAAAAFWAT!
A. *click* *redials*
Q. Hello! You've reached Acme, corp. How can we help you?
A. I was just disconnected. A voice said "THWOCKPOP! Shaft <> greefle! SNWWAAAAAAAFWAT!"
Q. Oh dear. Did you call our Magellanic Cloud operator? And call it an "hello"?
A. I asked to speak to the cambridge office.
Q. You should have been more specific.
A. I'm sorry! Your website, yellow pages entry, and interminable hold music made no mention of the fact that I was reaching a generic phone number for the organisation! I know that's not your fault, but if you publish that number as the number for Acme, Cambridge, CB4 nAA, surely someone should be in charge of telling people how to route calls?
 I will gladly tell you what's relevant so I can be forwarded, but I have no way of knowing what is! Which Acme problems are serviced by which Acme phone numbers is unfortunately not taught at school, nor by any of the information I could extract from your website.
Q. Of course, I'll forward your suggestion. Shall I connect you to the (earth) cambridge office now?
A. Please.
Q. Boston, Gloustershire, or Cambridgeshire?

In retrospect, it's another aspect of being disturbed by ignorance. I don't like feeling ignorant when I don't know how much detail I have to tell the poor overworked operator to get to the right person, nor to imply they're ignorant when they don't know.

Comments

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

*falls off chair laughing*

Oh, that's exactly what happened last time I had to call BT. It was like a never-ending loop of being transferred and cut off. I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets phone rage at annoying operators. >.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

"Oh but it's obvious, we all know that"

...Or rather, so obvious to our co-workers that we don't even know that we know it; so we and designed the user interface wrote the manuals with all kinds of hidden assumptions that, for some reason, the co-workers who tested it all didn't notice when they did the 'walkthrough' tests.

It's a major problem in interface design and a besetting sin of monocultures and inward-looking organisations. If they'd tested their interface (in your case, the answering script for switchboard operators) with independant outsiders, they'd have picked up the problem and fixed it: but 'outside' opinions are clearly not welcome at this company.