Slashdot Mirror
Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Atlantic, written by Alexis C. Madrigal: No one picks up the phone anymore. Even many businesses do everything they can to avoid picking up the phone. Of the 50 or so calls I received in the last month, I might have picked up four or five times. The reflex of answering -- built so deeply into people who grew up in 20th-century telephonic culture -- is gone. There are many reasons for the slow erosion of this commons. The most important aspect is structural: There are simply more communication options. Text messaging and its associated multimedia variations are rich and wonderful: words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs, regular old photos, video, links. Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously. It's almost as immediate as a phone call, but not quite. You've got your Twitter, your Facebook, your work Slack, your email, FaceTimes incoming from family members. So many little dings have begun to make the rings obsolete.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it. Is it an american thing?
Do people think that proper laws to outlaw that behaviour is some sort of free speech issue?
Can also be because gen-x and millenial generations are becoming dominant in the workplace.
My anecdote is my mother who worked as a receptionist and secretary for decades. It's ingrained in her culture not to hang up and to always answer the phone, even though she retired 20 years ago. This includes the obvious scammers from out of country that ask questions about her computer. "My computer is running fine, no I don't think I need to give you that, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you".
Anymore, 85% ((FTA) of calls are garbage, and with caller ID spoofing running rampant, you really don't know whom to answer that's outside your whitelist / phone book.
I never answer calls anymore. 95% of the calls I get are scammers and spammers. And the caller ID is always spoofed to something that looks similar to my own number.
I've even had people call me claiming my number is spamming them!
The phone companies should be held liable for not fixing caller ID spoofing. There are numerous ways to do this. Caller ID spoofing is needed for corporate main numbers and the like. Those could be registered just like SSL certs. There is no reason a random device should be allowed to spoof.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
now think completely disconnected and antisocial behaviour is acceptable. Don’t care? See how that works out for you long run.
I agree. I just had a conversation with a support employee who works for me yesterday. I told them to get out of their desk and walk to the customer's desk and give them an update on the situation IN PERSON. They were at a loss to see why a simple text or email wasn't good enough. True customer service is becoming a lost art because of this new disconnected mentality.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I'm 51 and definitely from the generation that always answered the phone.
I notice as my fellow employees get younger there is much less use of voice calls, with instant messaging and emails being preferred instead. The problem is that these communication methods often seem really inefficient and are as easy to ignore or under-respond to as a phone with a ringer on silent.
We've had problems crop up with clients and you'd never know what the nature and magnitude of them is when you get short texts like "Do you know about the issue at MZR?"
Does either response provide any value? I can answer "Yes" without actually knowing because the dumb text made it seem like there was one. I can answer no and what value does that add to the person asking?
Had they just fucking called we both would have been able to quickly sort out who knew what and who was going to do anything about it.
For me it is more like 95% that is spam. In the rare event I take the call, the caller either just close the connection (probably expecting me to call again at to number that costs money?) or is the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" (I must have a lot of virus). It can also be a legitimate insurance companies, or callers from red cross etc.
If I take my phone, I generally just answer with the following line. "No! I am not interested. You may not call this number. Take me off you list". And then I close the line. I do feel it actually started to lower the amount of spam calls after I started saying that.
But mostly I do NOT answer my phone if I don't know the number, or expects a call. I check my email once a day. At most. Same with SMS. I generally leave my phone at my desk when walking around the office. Same at home.
It is fascinating to realize that I am more difficult than ever to get a hold on.
My solution?
If you're not in my contact list, I'm not answering.
If it's important, leave a message.
If you call me more than twice and don't leave a message, your number is blocked...
I'm older (43) and still tend to answer the phone. But, one thing I do see is that people who don't like talking to people feel they don't have to anymore. There's other non-voice options.
This is especially true in workplaces, where the younger crowd is finally starting to reach the supervisory levels. In tech shops it's all Slack, Teams, IM of one form or another, texting, etc. I actually find myself preferring this, even though I know it's not normal.
I'm not an antisocial nerd, but I'm also not a type-A salesy extrovert either. Talking to people on the phone means uncomfortable small talk, having to manage the conversation, etc. Sending a to-the-point message is much more useful to me. I know extroverts probably love the small talk aspect, but it's something I can live without if I can get my information without it.
SIP is the reason why phones are now completely stuffed. By dropping the price of international calls to literally $0.00 (simply an international SIP trunk.) It meant that all spammers have to do is control a computer in the country they wish to dial into and all calls are free or as near to free as needed to justify the expense of making the calls. This could be fixed with carrier/vendor cooperation. But it won't happen.
I have contact entry titled "scumbags" which is set to send callers directly to voicemail. I answer unknown numbers if I am not otherwise occupied and when it is a scam / unsolicited sales call I just add them to the scumbags entry. I don't know how many times they call again but I *rarely* receive said calls anymore.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yet another reason I never answer my cell phone. As OP pointed out, most calls are telemarketers and most of the voice mails they leave are in English. Starting about a month ago I've started getting voice mails in Chinese. What's up with that? I'd at least have expected Spanish before Chinese.
Your own phone provider bills the overseas party. What's the enforcement problem?
Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously.
I find texting to be a distracting pain in the ass, and if a text thread goes beyond a few messaged in the space of an hour, I'm either placing a call or dropping the thread. Texting is a thoroughly inefficient way of communicating when compared with two-way speech, even if you don't consider that it's WAY harder to text and do something else than it is to talk and do something else.
... words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs ...
I hate those damned things - they're un-subtle, annoying, tacky, and cheesy. Fortunately, I only get stuck with Emoji - I had to look up the other two for this comment. And if THEY start showing up, I'm going back to a flip phone.
Texting definitely has its uses, and I appreciate what it brought to the party; but it is in NO WAY a substitute for talking, and any graphic elements beyond specific and personal pictures and videos are the ugly garden trolls and velvet paintings of the smartphone world. Now get off of my lawn, dammit!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
....if I don't know the number. Too many spam calls, scam calls, political calls. If you're not in my phone list, F**K OFF.
Telephony is a slow, inefficient medium for the basics of communicating information.
You want me to do something, or tell me something, email me. Text me if I'm mobile, but email will get through. It'll also all be "on the record".
If you don't want it on the record, I don't want to hear it.
At work I have an advertised direct line and I also get calls from a switchboard. I can summarise every phone call I get into a handful of categories:
- People who have techy problems who haven't emailled / ticketed them. Sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's because they want to avoid admitting fault, it's NEVER because they couldn't just email/ticket them.
- People I don't want trying to sell me things.
- People I already buy things from "checking in" to see if I've happened to completely forget their existence, acquire several major and important and expensive projects, but just never asked them.
- Convenience calls: "Your parcel is at the front desk", etc.
Personally, I don't even have a landline, because it was always just sales. My mobile phone, however gets these calls:
- People who don't know me.
Everyone else texts, WhatsApps, emails, Facebooks or whatever.
Voice calls are no good for remembering things ("Let me just write that down" / "Can you email me that number"), they are no good for conveying most information ("Send me the spreadsheet", "could you take a photo so I can see"), they take much longer to convey whatever information (which is an advantage if, say, it's a friend calling, but still much better to do in person), and they rely on you both being available to talk simultaneously to the point that one of you has to interrupt the other one most of the time.
Voice calls are an antiquity. It's like a hand-written letter. You use them to "feel", not to communicate. And most use of them is with people you don't want to "feel" with. That guy at Dell might want to generate a rapport with me, but I don't want that.
And the only calls I make are to "feel". Either express my frustration at lack of service, talk to friends, etc.
Don't even get me started on video calls.
I set my default ringtone to silent, and give ringtones to those I know.
Sign up for the Do Not Call list, I've not gotten marketing calls in years (or maybe decades).
Tone of voice gets lost in text miscommunication.
There was a study I recall pointing out most emoji are misinterpreted by the recipient. There's a whole new variety of smilies with stuff on their faces that I have no idea what it's supposed to represent, or what the user intended by it. They just get ignored completely. My SO I just tell I don't know what they meant. If it matters they explain.
But the big thing as I age, reading texts requires finding a pair of glasses. Instead of spending an hour back and forth, it's far easier to resolve all issues in a single two minute phone call.
Driving. I can legally be on a phone call whilst driving. Voice to text works well on Android, horribly useless on iOS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I reduce the problem by having a different ringtone for unknown callers, and a voice message that tells people I screen unknown callers and please leave a message. If I get a message I know it immediately and can check, and it's rarely spam (political robocalls notwithstanding). Perhaps I've missed out on an old flame calling to reunite and chickening out at the message, but I doubt it. And when my friends change their number, or call from another phone, they generally still reach me within minutes of placing the call.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Perhaps the U.S. authorities should try enforcing the law and apply pressure to foreign phone companies. They're too busy kicking in doors for minor drug offenses here to bother with things that actually affect people.
What?
Except for e-mail: no, not one of them. And none of their alternatives either. None at all. And I'm really happy about it, and I don't plan to change anything about it. Yes, I work in IT.
And no, I don't use the telephone much, either.
On the other hand, in some countries including mine – as others already have reported here – the telephone is still functional, as telephone spammers are being reliably persecuted and fined. The few spammers which still come through, disguising themselves as opinion research institutes or some such or perhaps actually being one, who knows, can easily be blocked in the phone system...
Maybe occasionally. Most of the time it's a royal PITA.
Texting is slower than Morse code for most people. The tiny keyboard that phone include make it near impossible to do anything more complicated than sending messages like "Wot U doin" without misspelling just about every word. Texting seems to be the beyond-the-grave revenge of the guy who invented the "If u cn rd ths u cn get a gud job..." ads you used to see in the back of magazines.
Texting is highly asynchronous. OK... I can send a message multiple people with a text but, guess what, you can do the same thing with a modern mobile phone: add another person to a phone call. Sending "I will be late" to a group using texting is great. Texting back and forth with that same group where to meet for dinner is excruciatingly slow. Texting has got to be at least an order of magnitude slower for communications than the human voice will ever be.
Texting does have one advantage over a phone call: it's slightly less of a disruption. A brief beep isn't the annoyance that a ringtone can be in a meeting. The worst part of that brief annoyance, though, is that once someone sends you a text, they nearly always expect you to text them back, no matter how complex your response is going to be. Try calling them back because your response is better done via actually using the phone to talk and they'll let your call go to voice mail.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Back in the day, before electronic bill payment, we would get all of our bills via mail carrier and sit down and write paper checks to pay them. We would check the mailbox every day because there might be something important in there.
Electronic bill payment has replaced all of those paper bills so what are we left with? My mailbox is filled almost entirely with junk mail. Outside of Christmas cards I get almost nothing of value. So I don't feel the need to check the mailbox every day like I used to.
Phone calls are becoming like that too. The vast majority are from people I don't know trying to sell me something I don't need. Unless I recognize the number I simply ignore it. I wish we could have the equivalent of a junk mail filter for unwanted phone calls. Unless the incoming call is from someone in my contact list then don't even ring the phone. And then have it send a fingernails-on-blackboard screech back into the ear of the caller. And jam the callers line so they can't make any other calls from that phone for at least an hour.
You guys are still paying for incoming calls, right? Here in Europe everyone picks up their phone, all the time, always. If we don't want to be called by a certain number we just add it to the blocking list.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Our DO Not Call law inserted two exceptions beyond emergency calls
1. Politicians and polling people can call you unsolicited
2. Anyone you had a previous bussiness relationship or contact with can call.
The last one is really abused. Say you start to buy an electric fur lined shaving mug on etsy but then change your mind at the "confirm this purchase" step. You just had a bussiness relationship where you provided contact info.
Next they sell your info to some broker who sells it to 1000 other people who are now considered "affiliates" of the original transaction. SO they have standing to call on the do-not-call list.
The final problem is that phone companies all want to monetize their role in preventing you from dreading the phone ringing. Just as Ring tones were not free but were costless to provide, they want to charge you for allowing you to benefit from their curated blacklists. And they want to sell free passes one the blacklists (whitelisting) to people who pay them. They could do this for free as it's nearly costless.
SO basically the phone companies are working hard to make you hate your phone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But seriously, I don't answer calls from unknown sources. They get sent to voicemail. Next, I check the voice mail and if it is indeed someone I never want to talk to I add the number to my contact called Shit List. There are about 300 numbers in that contact. I chose an excellent image to use for the "Shit List" caller: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9f/6...
I'm not just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I might be eating a meal or sitting with friends, or in the middle of work.
And there's no reason for me to drop everything just because someone picked this arbitrary point in time to have a conversation.
... to fewer calls to businesses.
I love chat.
I can multitask during the session; resolution is mostly timely, and both parties can get on with their day.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The telcos don't care either way, they make money regardless.
How, exactly? If SIP/overseas calls cost the originator zero, what's in it for my local telco?
The solution would be for the telco to allow SIP calls through their gateway but restrict the caller ID/ANI feature to paying customers. And then restrict the use of alternate identities (phone numbers) to a pool of numbers that the originating caller is paying for. No more spoofing a local exchange number by telemarketers for free. And if one telco becomes lax about enforcing this by passing bogus calls through their network, just blacklist their entire system and replace the bogus phone number with an "Evil Phone Company" tag.
Have gnu, will travel.
I told them to get out of their desk and walk to the customer's desk
B...b...but I'm sitting in Starbucks right now.
Have gnu, will travel.
Um, you do realize that many spammers literally generate a random number to call you from? It doesn't help to block specific numbers when you don't get calls from specific numbers. And not all "unidentified" calls are spammers, so you shouldn't want to block them outright.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have never liked the phone, for one simple reason: a phone call is an interruption. The caller is interrupting me, and unless I'm calling a call centre, I'm interrupting someone else. I worked in a call centre for a while, both making and taking calls, and saw how massively inefficient the whole call handling business is; all the wasted time and frustration that goes along with that.
Apart from prearranged calls, I now view phone calls as for emergencies only, mostly for things that genuinely cannot wait and which justify interrupting someone else's work. Nearly everything we do does not fall in to that category.
(this is not a
I have a Government issued phone. On it too 95% of the rings are spammers, scammers and telemarketers. If caller ID doesn't pop with one of my contacts, I don't answer. The number is on the do-no-call registry - which really should be call the do-nothing registry because that's really the effect.
There was no spam calling because in the US there was (effectively) only one phone company, you had to get them to hook you up with an actual wire, and when they had caller-ID and you had a PBX or whatever that could set it, they didn't tolerate bullshit with changing that number to fool people. Now we've gone so far into deregulation that you can use an internet connection to connect with a bottom-feeder telco that will hook you up without giving even a nano-fuck.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I never answer it and have distinctive ring enabled to send known robocallers to the dead zone. Anyone else gets voice mail. Anyone who would actually need to get in touch calls my cell (which I guard closely) or email/SMS. Every once in a while I'll pick up a robo just to fuck with them for entertainment and to waste their time, but otherwise it just rings silently.
Even if you shut down one robocall center, three more pop up in its place. The telcos don't care either way, they make money regardless. The government regulators aka the FCC are too busy giving the telco executives handjobs to actually care about consumers.
That's the enforcement problem.
If you shut down the robocall place with a 2000 pound bomb, it's much less likely 3 more would pop up in its place. Drone strikes for justice! Of course, that would require politicians actually caring about voters, so this is all idle fantasy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I rarely see a spammer reuse a number so I don't see blocking to be effective. If someone calls me twice in a row, I'll probably pickup.
Maybe someone can help me out here. Voicemail doesn't seem to help with phone spam much. The spam callers usually leave a voice message but it's just empty. I haven't figured out a way of filtering these out. That means that I actually have to play it to realize that it's spam. So, each spam call costs me around 20 seconds of my life in terms of opening phone, listening for a few seconds, and blocking the phone number if it's spam. There are... what..... 10 billion phone numbers in the U.S. alone? I could block spam calls for a full hour a day and not make headway. I'm pretty sure the spammers switch phone numbers on a regular basis?
Dealing with email spam is far easier. I can delete the 25 spam messages I get each day in under 15 seconds.
What I've done is whitelist people on my contacts. I've told them not to call unless they really need to get my attention. That way, if I hear my ringer go off, I know I *really* need to answer. It solves the spam issue, but if someone is stranded and using a phone number I haven't listed, that will be an issue.
Looking at the caller ID: "Well, if you're unavailable, then I'm unavailable."
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
If it's not from a number I recognize I don't answer the phone. If they don't leave a voicemail of some sort then it must not have been important, or it was just some scam call I would have hung up on anyway. Too many abuses of the telephone system anymore, has been this way for at least 20 years or so. Frankly if I thought I could get along completely without a phone then I wouldn't even have one at all.
The classic telephone system is hopelessly outdated. It turned into a spam-town.
Please, if you need to call me for the first time, send me an SMS, or WhatsUp, or e-mail message first with a short explanation of the topic. I pick up a phone call only from phone numbers in my contacts.
Not uncommon scenario: you make a support call to an Indiana number routed to India. After the incident is escalated, they ask for some time and say they will call you back. No one on that end knows what number will come up or even if it will always be the same number.
Text has the same immediacy as a voice call, but it doesn't have to interrupt what you're doing. You also know what the caller wants before getting back to that person, which makes spam a lot less common and more easily spoofed.
Answer your phone with a muted microphone.
Human callers will issue their confused "Hello?" calls into the void, identifying themselves as authentic.
Software could easily note speech on the other end, note an unexpected mid-call termination (you hung up) marking your number as a legitimate (and more importantly, active) data point. This is valuable information internally, maybe even enough to sell.
Even a voice synth "Hello." isn't that hard to identify. Answer muted, put the phone away, let the robot rant until it hangs up.
And when Acme Co.'s American customers fail to receive their calls because Acme Co. hired Call Co. to do support, then Call Co. outsourced to Service Co. who outsourced to Foreign Co. who hired WhoTheFuckKnows Co. to route their calls caused Acme Co's calls to come through looking like they originated from Mars, who do you think takes the blame? It's MyTel.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it. Is it an american thing?
1a: People sued the spammers in civil courts for various damages and started winning.
1b; Some states passed anti-phone-spam laws, some of which made it easier to sue and win defined amounts for defined misbehavior. Ramp up 1a.
2: Telemarketers lobbied congress to get these suits off their backs and out of their business models.
3: Congress responded with the can-spam act. It purported to regulate, and criminalize some classes of, telemarketing spam nationally (while protecting others - such as political campaign calls. polls, charities, and businesses who could claim a relationship with the calle), block even those to cell phones (which, at the time, typically charged high by-the-minute rates even on incoming calls), and create a national do-not-call list that the telemarketers had to respect.
But it also preempted state laws and civil suits. You had to appeal to the feds for enforcement.
4: State level prosecutions and civil suits stopped.
5: People appealed to the feds for enforcement.
6:
7: Telemarketers figured this out and ramped up their calls.
8: PROFIT!
9: Telemarketers started ignoring the do-not-call list with impunity.
10: MORE PROFIT!
11: Telemarketers figured out how to spoof caller ID and number blocking.
12: STILL MORE PROFIT!
13: Technology was developed to make the process cheaper to run:
13a: Boiler-room call-victim-first, call-phone-pimp-if-he-answers, drop-call-if-they're-all-busy systems.
13b: Improving tech to distinguish pickup from voicemail or failed call and keep the victim on the line: answer timing, phone SIT tone detection on call failures, voice recognition of "hello" and its analogs, canned prompts to hold interest, computer generated voice asking for the victim by name.
13c: Full-bore scripted or AI cyber-phone-pimps. (Why pay humans to staff a boiler room when you can buy software and computers for far less?)
14: PROFIT, PROFIT, PROFIT!
15: Customers tried to get the phone companies to do something to mitigate the problem, or disconnect the phone-spammers.
16:
17: Academic estimates how much the phone carriers earn per year delivering phone spam: (If I recall correctly: many billions - not quite a trillion - per year.)
18: PROFIT for phone carriers, too.
19: Switching carriers doesn't help because they are required to connect calls from other networks and (with the source spoofed) can't distinguish the spam calls.
20: Customers give up.
So it's not that we're OK with it. We're not. It's just that the Washington swamp rats got bought a few years back and right now we've got no leverage - other than doing our best to throw the rascals out and drain the swamp.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
6: and 16: were supposed to be <the sound of crickets> but I forgot to escape the angle brackets.
But a blank line works almost as well, doesn't it? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We've moved from POTS with SS7, which for all its detriments at least allowed you to locate the SOB who was calling you and arrest them, to SIP. How many different implimentations are there of SIP? Hundreds. And some of the components of SIP, like codecs, are proprietary and will probably at this point forever be under patent or copyright.
I have a phone system at work I bought from my ISP. You'd think they'd configure a throughput reserve for QOS Traffic? Nope. I have to escalate to an account manager for this and waste all sorts of time troubleshooting and complaining because I've got a 7% call drop rate on a MPLS tunnel with QOS on a SLA.
Most of these robocalls are coming out of India or China, and why do we put up with THAT? Why do we put up with "remote work" from india and China? Why do we tolerate call centers being moved to the phillipines? Where's the great Firewall of America? At one ISP, the management was daft enough to try to have account managers in the phillipines help me first; that did not last long, they were not able to do the needful. They also lost that contract. And had over $100k of equipment shipped to us that sat for a year because they tried it with their logistics people and didn't think through a piolet program.
Do Cellphones generally have the ability to assign a ringtone to a group of people? No. Even the most basic functionality. You'd think the contact list would've changed in the last 20 years since Outlook 97. It hasn't. But it has a nice new GUI front-end and search feature in windows now. FFS.
This is all a symptom of a telephone system that is so badly mismanaged that people are now abandoning it for something, anything, else.
This is what software defined telephony looks like.
Problem is that's just what they are doing so now you have to sift through dozens or more of telemarketers voicemails. And Blocking doesn't do a damn thing at all, the blocked numbers are also forwarded to voicemail..
Jack of all trades,master of none
The main reason I don't answer is it's usually work calling. Whether it's my turn on call or not, we have so much on call emergencies, and they often last like 12 hours or more, they call the rest of us for backup. It's exhausting. And when you don't answer, they start texting. "Oh, can you help? So-n-so has already been working it for 12 hours." And then you find out it was the customer's networking vendor that screwed it up with some un-planned, un-approved change that broke the vessel or multiple vessels, and there was nothing we could have done to fix it, anyway... all we did is diagnose their problem for them. Hell, they even call during vacation. Am I the only one experiencing this?
This sig intentionally left blank.
Yeah, that all depends on the end-user. Some end-users never really reply to our emails, aren't at their desks, etc. The higher up the chain the worse it gets; but honestly it's not because their rude but they just are super-busy, deluged with email already, etc. That's when the "unwritten institutional knowledge" comes in handy, to know which users will quickly answer emails and which are better off just going up to their desks.
Plus, physically going up to users often reinforces that IT are "real people" in the same building, build rapport, and helps establish those very important internal business / social connections. If IT is friendly and helpful with the users, the users will usually do the same. Also, having some written procedures that say "if no response, call user; if no answer or call back after XX time, go to their desk." or such.
Well, in that example it SHOULD be the exec at Call Co., who failed at their SLA between them and Acme. It would then be up to Call Co. to rectify monetary fines from the missed SLA with Service Co, then Service Co. vs. Foreign Co, etc.
I'm 46 and so also from the generation that was conditioned to pick up a ringing phone. But the reason I still do it today is because of what "swb" says here. There are too many situations where a real time voice conversation gets something resolved efficiently, where the other methods just don't.
With IM and texting, the parties aren't a "captive audience". They can carry on the conversation at their leisure, while doing and thinking about other things. I can't get a quick resolution if it's not a simple yes or no type question.
Just last week, I needed to get some changes made to my Sirius/XM subscription. Tried the online chat but it was too slow and frustrating. It was resolved quickly by calling and and just explaining what I wanted to do. Same with updating my car insurance. The original quote I requested prompted me to ask about several other things on the policy, and everything was sorted out in a single phone call. I tried to text message my agent initially, but he only paid attention to the first item I asked about and didn't answer my other questions.
I hear younger people constantly saying they just don't talk on the phone anymore, and would often get rid of the phone number and voice portion of their cellphone if they could do it and save money on the bill. That saddens me, because they don't realize what they're giving up. The telephone was a great invention because it allowed vocal communication between distant parties. Everything else you can do on a cellphone today is just "pocket computer" stuff. And throughout the history of the computer, a telephone has still been a useful device to have along-side of one. Videoconferencing tools like Skype and Zoom do blur the lines. But still, a telephone call is a more simple, direct way to establish the communications link.
I don't like phonecalls because they disrupt what you're doing...
A text message or email sits in the inbox until you are free to deal with it.
I unfortunately deal with many people who insist on phonecalls, often for really stupid things like just repeating exactly the same thing i've already said on email, or to ask me questions which i don't have the answer for and am only able to say "i'll look that up and email you the answer", they usually wont even give me a list of questions in advance of the call so i can ensure i have the information to hand so it all ends up a colossal waste of everyone's time.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I don't usually pick up the phone because nobody I care about calls me. They text me one way or another. The only things that call me a robots pretending to be human.
Phone rings
Me: Hello? *pause* Hello?
Bot: Hello, my name is Botsy MacBotsface, and I'm calling you from SpamFuckers Ltd. Our records indicate that you've been involved in an accident that wasn't your fault. Is that right?
Me: *complete silence*
I just go silent and let the bot hang up. I don't even hand up on it, as that may be an indication that I exist.
Screwup: A colleague coughed while in the "silent" stage above and the bot understood "yes", so it continued with the script:
Bot: When did that happen?
Me: *silence*
Bot: Hello? *pause* *hangup*
But now I wonder if I could just answer every question by making a noise, and if a real human follows up, I do that to them too.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Why do you think what you have to say is so important that I should drop everything and talk to you immediately? If I answer your call someone better be dieing.
As I grew up, etiquette was to allow 10 rings. That’s a whole minute to answer the phone. I often leave my cell in the bedroom as I go about my morning. Or in the livingroom when I’m home and about the house. This is less than 40 feet. I start to walk to my phone and folks have hung up before I get there. In the Internet age, we expect 1/4 second response times, so it seems intolerably long to wait even 15 seconds for someone to answer when you call. And the hesitation to see it ring twice before answering so as not to seem anxious or just hanging waiting for a call combined with the digital intolerance makes the window for answering or expecting an answer very short.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
+1
What I'm reading from people here is: "I'm too important to be bothered with having to actually talk to a person. The world revolves around my schedule and preferences; everyone else can just wait until I'm willing to communicate."
But I bet when you call a company, you expect a real person to answer the phone and talk to you.
In my area, you get a random number dialer (two of my phones are close, and A will always ring before B a few minutes later), so blocking in advance won't work. It is a business line, so you CANNOT whitelist. The CID ranges from an Apple Store local number to MS service center....pick up results in a quick handoff complete with "non US" phone noise. You then end up in the call center, which usually has a non english primary accent, or often "brit english". I will act old, and somewhat demented. (just like reality) and get things wrong. The key is act sufficently that it takes them a while to realize they are being baited. Toss in some racist or anti-religious nonsense while you're at it... I still have a fax machine. If they have a callback # I will just leave the machine on autodial. The machine will bang back at them for hours at a time, and many of the millenials don't know what a fax recogniton beeeep is. IF I SAVED ONE OLD PERSON, IT'S ALL WORTH IT.
The system to put an end to this should be possible. I should be able to use a simple code, *## to tag the prior call as spam. The best information available about the caller should go to the FTC and the spam blocking function of the telecom.
If you make the process harder than a second or two, you are going to drop your complaint rate by a factor of 100.
I suppose in the US, the FCC would have to authorize a telecom charge of $X a month, and require it to be effectively deployed to block spam. If there is no cash flow for it, it won't get done.
I don't answer it. I get hit with 4-5 "spam" calls a day. Truecaller app knocks most of them down. The problem with the "do not call" list is these clowns use fake numbers. Pretty easy to figure them out...the area code and prefix are usually the same as my phone number. Morons think that makes it easier to get through? Nope, just makes my block list longer.
Almost every business with whom I transact online (where mandatory form fields prevent me saying, "You don't need to know that") thinks my phone number is 01234567890. The ones that demand a mobile number think it's 0777777777.
At least local ones. Always get an answering computer, where it's impossible or damned difficult to talk to a person, which is what I want to do. If I want to talk to a local business, I get in the car and drive to their place of business and walk in the door.
Don't answer calls, either, unless I know exactly who it is. Friends, businesses I have business with, I answer. Everyone else gets ignored. Rarely get a voicemail.
Easy solution to this - charge $0.50 / call for all calls, like mailing a letter. Problem solved overnight.
My younger brother, ladies and gentlemen. Drive me up the wall. It is about 1 in 50 calls when he actually picks up.
Seems like I get a great deal of spam calls. Probably need to look into how to get them fined for it.
We invented phones to get away from writing letters and sending telegrams. Now, we're writing letters and sending telegrams again.
If you find texting exciting and phone calls boring, you need new friends.
I keep seeing this come up in the comments. It occurs to me to wonder... What criteria are you using to define efficiency? If it's words transacted per minute, then yes, a call is more efficient. If it's meaningful information transacted per minute, telephones suck ass.
SPAM calls are really the reason.
Many have pointed out legislation to prevent this. However at least in my country, there are often large loopholes left for business. So while I'll get pure spam every now again again, most of it is from some company with whom I already have some service with who are exempt (Cable, Internet, Phone, Electrical, Gas, Charities, etc) who will try to constantly up-sell you whatever promotion they are doing that week. So while Bell for example couldn't just cold call me if I wasn't already a customer, but once a customer they can seemingly call whenever they like. I've dropped charities for this exact reason as some once you are involved see it as a cart blanch to call and harass you for more money constantly. The Red Cross is another one, that once I gave blood, I now get vampire calls constantly...
About the only one who ever calls me anymore are my parents, and they have had the same phone number for like the last 40 years...
http://www.newser.com/story/26...
I almost always answer the phone, but do appreciate T-Mobile's spam filter which shows the name ID of suspect calls as "Scam Likely". Those tend to get ignored.
Nope, not relevant. I didn't get a phone until about 1994, and I never developed that reflex. Someone calls, I let it ring out then do a last-caller ID and if I recognise the number, call back and say I was on the shitter. If I don't recognise the number, no call back. It was never difficult, and got easier when I got a handset with a screen that displayed the incoming number.
OK, I was 31 when I started living with a phone - maybe other people developed different habits if they had a phone in their twenties or teens. But even so, it's just a habit, not a reflex.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"