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Have you noticed how businesses, particularly within the healthcare industry, have insulated themselves from client/customer contact to an alarming degree using the technological machinations now available to them? I give you a case in point. In July I got a referral to a gastroenterologist (GE) to discuss digestive issues. “Digestive issues” turned out to be an understatement since, if you read my previous blog post, I had a destroyed sigmoid colon that was removed with major surgery. Anyway, back to the GE. The earliest appointment they could give me was in mid-October and it was a telemedicine consultation. I took it and I kept it even though I had the surgery in the meantime. I thought perhaps the GE would have some insights to share. A few weeks before my appointment, I received an email telling me to call the GE’s clinic to have them set up an account for me in their patient portal to provide “paperwork” prior to the appointment. Fair enough. I began trying to call the clinic. Every time I called, I went through a voicemail maze and was put on hold. Sometimes I waited on hold, other times I couldn’t wait around. Twice I waited on hold for 20 minute and never got through to a person. The email about calling the office was sent from a “donotreply” address so I couldn’t respond. The website offered no avenue for contact.
More and more businesses, particularly health clinics, employ the machinations of impenetrable phone and web-based systems to manage incoming communications. When I actually connect with a live human via one of these machines, it takes me a moment to recognize that I’m talking to a person and not a voice message, bot, or assistant-algorithm. I never did get a live person at the GE clinic prior to my telemedicine appointment, which turned out to be a colossal waste of time. The doctor had no helpful advice and doggedly tried to convince me I needed a colonoscopy, despite the fact that I no longer had a sigmoid colon and that surgeons had recently thoroughly examined my colon with my abdomen split wide open using their eyeballs and not a camera on a stick. After I politely cut the session with the useless GE short, I suddenly realized that I had still never communicated with her office.
I tried calling the office yet again, one last-ditch attempt, and once again went through the voicemail maze and spoke to no one. I had never once received an email with a viable address to which I could respond. So I reverted to that 20th century mechanism called pen and paper. I mailed a letter to the clinic and chewed them out for being so inaccessible and I enclosed photocopies of my insurance cards so they could bill for my worthless session with their clueless GE. A few days later, I received a text message from their office confirming that they had received my billing information and the woman who texted me actually gave me her direct-line phone number! So I called her. We discussed the problem I had reaching anyone in the office and she apologized and said they are having systems issues. Ya think?
That clinic was an extreme case, but I have had similar difficulties getting through to healthcare providers and businesses. My husband has had bizarre and unbelievable experiences attempting to order health supplies to support management of his diabetes. He has literally spent hours on hold with no other option. Businesses seem to have given up on the notion of front office staff and are invested in these machined systems that keep clients at arm’s length. It’s infuriating and unviable.
Here’s another story about getting lost in the machine. We have a subscription to the New York Times for home delivery of the Sunday paper to our door and it includes access to all digital content. I read the NYT every day online, Ron plays the word games on his phone, and we enjoy getting newsprint on our fingers while reading an actual paper on Sundays. It’s an old-fashioned pleasure. When I first set up the subscription, many years ago, I received a special rate for it. That good rate lasted for a year. At the end of the year, I called the NYT and asked if they would extend the rate. They did. And they continued to do so for years afterward. Every six months I would call and ask for an extension and they would give it to me.
So a few weeks ago, the good rate expired again, and I called as usual to extend it. The person I talked to said they had no deals available to offer me and my rate would be doubled starting that week. I thought perhaps I had just had bad luck and gotten a mean person or a person having an off day. So I tried going on the chat online and asking if I could get my rate extended. At first I got an assistant-algorithm that couldn’t figure out what I wanted but eventually it passed me off to a chat-person, who also declined to extend my good rate. I waited a few days and called in again and once again was told that the rate couldn’t be extended. We decided to switch to an all-digital subscription, which is less expensive than having the Sunday paper delivered as part of the deal. We couldn’t justify paying so much just to have a hard copy of the Sunday paper when we could access all the content online anyway.
I called the subscription office and explained that I wanted to cancel our Sunday paper subscription and switch to a fully digital subscription instead. The agent then asked, “If I could give you a special rate on the Sunday subscription, would you keep it?” I asked what kind of rate and it was the rate I had originally wanted to keep to begin with. So of course I accepted her offer and now I have the rate I wanted in the first place. Explain to me how this is an efficient way to do business.
I have a friend who just turned 90 who has no computer. She doesn’t know how to use one. Without online banking, she pays her bills by mail. She drives to the AT&T store in the nearby shopping mall to pay her phone bill in person with a check. If she encounters something that is only doable online, she calls a younger family member to take care of it for her. When I want to send her pictures of my grandchildren, I go online at Costco and have prints made, have them delivered to my door, and mail them to her. I’m beginning to think that she is onto something. The convenience of doing everything online or from smart phones is no longer a convenience when more and more transactions require hours on hold or getting lost in the system or a complete inability to make the necessary connection. Lately, I find myself longing for a simpler life, a life outside the technology machines.
