Hanging on The Telephone

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Here’s a great idea for you if you feel that your life expectancy is unlimited and you can afford to chuck away some of the time the good Lord gave you. Call the Nationwide Building Society and count the hours as you wait, in vain, to speak to anyone at all. You’ll have more success selling Chinese takeaway at a rally for Tibet.

I realise that as a way of wasting your life, calling a building society isn’t up there with selling ice cream in Siberia or sun cream in Glasgow but, with financial markets in meltdown, you should really should cheer yourself up and try it as The Nationwide has come up with a novel way of not lending money.

Pick up the ‘phone to call them and your enquiry is now being directed by computer recognition software. None of the usual “press one for banking, two for insurance, three for a telling off because you’re poor,” that seems to proliferate everywhere. I swear we’ll find all walks of life using this nonsense soon. “Thank you for calling Dead End Funeral Directors. We’re sorry your loved one has kicked the bucket. Press one for burial, two for cremation…….”

But, at Nationwide, the recorded voice asks you to state what you want, then recognises a word or two and puts you through to the relevant department. So say to it “I’d like a mortgage” and it reacts to the “age” sound and you get put through to the mortgage department. Say something that sounds similar, like “I once slept with Elaine Paige”, and you’ll still get put through to the mortgage department. Then try saying “Whatever you do don’t put me through to the mortgage department” and, you’ve guessed it, you’ll be put right through to the mortgage department.

And here’s the clever bit. After the computer voice says she’s connecting you, the ‘phone goes deader than a Cheeky Girls’ career and you’re left waiting for ever. So, you call back and go through the same process, then make a cup of tea and try again, and before long summer has arrived and you’ve forgotten why you called in the first place.

While other institutions say, outright, that they won’t lend money just now, Nationwide flirts with you like a promiscuous Geisha and then cuts you off, penniless, and with not one single human being getting paid at their end to get involved. I can’t help but feel they could at least stump up a few hundred quid to make it more entertaining and get Morgan Freeman or Barney The Purple Dinosaur to do the voice. It’s a masterful way of pretending that they’re not withholding money, while at the same time giving none away, not even to telephone staff.

I then tried the Abbey Building Society and spoke to a real, live, human being. She referred me to the correct department where I waited for longer than a John Prescott lunch, listening to bland muzak. You’d think by now they’d employ a DJ who could ask you after, say, ten minutes of listening to music from the Big Blands whether you had any requests.

Eventually I spoke with a girl who was from the highly trained, highly bored, school of advisers and who read her script for probably the fortieth time that morning. I’m sure these people start the day full of enthusiasm and enunciate clearly but by the time I get to them they have word blindness as they search their script and elide all the words together. I could just about make out “Ihavetoadviseyou thatthiscallmaybe recordedandusedfor trainingpurposes”, but we then moved on to the next level of speech impairment with
“Areyoucallingregardinganexistingenquiryorareyoumakinganewapplication?.”

I was embarrassed saying “excuse me each time” as she simply sighed and read it again, even faster, and with an air of boredom that made me want to apologise for pulling her away from Hello magazine and spoiling her day. I’m not sure what my conversation with her means I have committed to, but as soon as I get my hands on a Klingon dictionary I intend to find out.

My brother used to supervise call centres and he tells me the most trusted accents are Scottish, Irish and Geordie, so what I can’t understand is why most call centre voices sound exactly like the nice man I call each Friday night at the Bombay Express for my Tikka Massala? I know all the off shoring financial reasons for siting complaints departments, sorry, Customer Service Centres, in India and the staff are invariably unflappable and speak better English than I do. Yet there’s a problem. Because these people are so very polite, I never feel I can get angry with them for the bad service that’s caused my call in the first place and I end up apologising to them instead.

So, I can’t win. If I call someone here in the UK, I end up apologising to some fed up, sighing, script reader for intruding on her day. If I call India, I end up apologising because they’re so nice. Either way I can never get anything off my chest by ranting in a release of frustration and anger. So maybe the Nationwide have got it right in just letting the ‘phone go dead.

I’ll call them back later and shout down the ‘phone anyway, something like “I want to complain about your phone system which hasn’t worked in ages!!”. I’ll then get “You asked for mortgages. I’ll direct your call”.