Skip to main content

Whaat is in a name?

Said Einstein. No it was Shakespeare I think but then again what does it matter. I guess a lot since I discovered having a short name is always a plus - especially if you tangle with any call center support (you need that to discover how to turn on that bluetooth you just got - not from rinsing with mouthwash but to wirelessly yak with humanity). Otherwise my friends with certain highly prized first and last names hailing from the south of the Indian peninsula have to budget 15 minutes to establish their identity using the spelling of their names...those converstaions go something like - Mie name is Ravichandrashekhar Venkatachari Bhatiprollu - R as in Robert, A as in Apple ....you can simply imagine that the person on the other end has asked for a bathroom break after the thrid occurence of the A in the first name and its not even close to being done. Then middle and then last name...is this guy or gal in Phillipines going to last that long? After which comes the whole argument about how the telephone bill has some wrongly billed minutes when the connection did not even go through and uncle Arvind was upset I had hung up on him. Having wished the curse of customer service through telephones on ourselves, we find that there are many such nuances that work against the desire to seek quick help. I still find that talking to people at times is easier than dealing with voice prompted automatons that some large businesses employ (airlines who do not really want to deal with any human are notorious) where they clearly do not get the emotional aspect of how upset you really are and want a throat to strangle. Some banks in the US got that message and have switched to live operators manning the switchboard 24 hours a day. And this really leaves a mark in terms of service rendered. Hence that name becomes tops in customer quality. I savor these relations. So name your poison.

Comments

  1. I would blame the aggressive (automated) CRM vendors for the mess. Let the buyers (of these) beware- I forget the Latin phrase for this. QED.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...