The Website Says Call. The Phone Says Go Online.
You need help with one account problem. First, you have to get past two systems that keep recommending each other.
The website says your problem can’t be handled online. Please call customer service.
You call customer service. The recording suggests you visit the website.
Good. Both systems have a plan. The plan is for the other system to help you.
You stay on the line because you’ve already been to the website. The recording offers a list of reasons you might be calling. Billing. Technical support. Account access. Something else. You pick the closest option, which is not quite right, but there’s no button for “the website sent me here.”
Then it asks you to enter your account number. Fair enough. Somebody will need that. You enter it, and the recording reads it back one digit at a time, just to make sure the two of you are fully committed to this relationship.
While you wait, it reminds you that many common questions can be answered online. Not this one, according to the website, but many others. It’s nice to hear they’re having better luck.
The strange part is that the website and the phone line are both meant to save time. The website is supposed to spare you a call. The phone menu is supposed to get you to the right person. Instead, you’re spending several minutes proving you have already tried the thing each one recommends.
And when a person finally picks up, they may need the account number again. I don’t blame them. I assume the number I entered is still back there with the recording, where it and I shared a brief but apparently meaningless moment.
None of this means the person on the phone is doing anything wrong. They’re the first part of the process that might actually work. The problem is the route to reach them, which treats a straightforward request for help like a parcel that keeps arriving at the wrong address.
A website can’t solve every problem. A phone menu can’t understand every question. Fine. But when one tells you to call and the other tells you to go online, surely they could get together and decide which one of them means it.
Until then, the most useful customer-service option might be a button that says, “Yes, I tried the website. It told me to call you.”
The conversation
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