Has there been a systematic breakdown in CX?

Warrior Woman holding a sword in one hand and blue lighted palm extended in front of her

We want your money but none of us wants to talk with you. Finally, business leaders have figured out that conventional dialogue between humans is horribly inefficient and so unnecessary. And the days of talking with a distributor who knows so much about the products they are re-selling and who genuinely care about how they will help you are finally gone forever!

Buying products and services has never been so easy! Just click, save your CC info so they can keep billing you, and mindlessly enter a process that makes it extremely difficult to stop your payments. How clever we have made our society.

Human hand reaching finger to finger of a non-human hand suggesting AI connection

Customer “service” has also been radically simplified. No more are we forced to speak to a human to get assistance. Furthermore, we get the pleasure of providing our full account number, social security number, and confirmation that we have exhausted all means of avoiding a human by reading every FAQ. What fun!

 

OK, so why switch to a negative vibe hear? It’s likely due to my high cortisol levels after speaking with one more human that is reading a script and the only words allowed when off that script are “can’t”, “sorry”, “no”, and “have a nice day”. This most recent example is from calling a software product company acting on my customer’s behalf to get information about products they are interested in having me implement. I provided the name of the salesperson who cold-called my customer asking if I can speak with him. “I cannot do that without the customer number.” Hmmm, has the business leader in charge of this company been part of creating a script that discourages new business? “I need to know your customer’s phone number and email.” Ah, the real goal here is to create a lead in their CRM. But wait that will be a duplicate because I am calling back for the customer. “Even if I have the salesperson call you back they will need to customer’s full account number.” Since one may not exist maybe I can just make one up? Or once the salesperson is on the line I can dance around enough to get him to forget about this?

Picture of yellow caterpillar below a beautiful blue butterfly with transform and reinvent words forming a cross

Let’s be positive. Maybe this cattle herding purchasing process will someday include angel stops where you can find genuine assistance. And it will add some easy exits so it is as simple to stop paying as it was to start. That will depend on whether this is a permanent transformation of the human race, or our business “leaders” are just having a bad case of the hiccups.