Dialogue: Pinned down to being a number

Where have all the people gone?

Some years ago in Japan I went to cash a traveller's cheque at the bank. Luckily I had some time up my sleeve as it was back when Japan was boasting nearly full employment. I could see why - it literally took five people to execute the transaction, each of whom had a job spec with very defined parameters.

Admittedly it was a little frustrating but oddly enough I still recall the excruciatingly friendly lady whose job it was to take the cash from the person who counted it, put the money in a hello kitty tray and present it to me with a bow.

I have cashed many a traveller's cheque in the past but this is the only transaction I remember. You see, it involved people, albeit a few too many.

But as companies take advantage of new technology it's people contact that they believe we can do without. From their viewpoint, computers always turn up for work, gladly operate on Christmas Day with no mention of double time and in the long term cost far less than human labour. But what machines can't do is endear us to an organisation and make transactions positively memorable. Thus in the quest for customer loyalty and satisfaction, many organisations are shooting themselves in the foot through over-automation.

Our fate was sealed with the advent of the Pin number (I have about 120 different ones), which assured that despite these being our special secret we would from then on always be just a number.

Banks are a classic. Not only do we pay for the privilege of using their establishment, we are then asked to do everything ourselves. One bank employs people who queue crawl to remind people about the automated machine. This is the same bank whose great service-oriented staff often feature in their ads. So what do these people do all day now that we are doing their jobs?

It irks when banks programme their cash-dispensing machines with phrases of the "yikes" and "oops, sorry" variety in the vain hope that they will pass as pseudo-humans. And telephone and internet banking may be handy after hours but I'd still prefer to talk to someone who can give me a personalised response. I don't mean a fob-off to a call centre either; I want someone who knows me, not just my bank account.

New Zealand has gone call-centre crazy since we realised we had the English speakers and the technology. Call centres are a cheat's way of giving the impression of personal service when the person taking the call often has little passion for or knowledge of the company.

Make an inquiry just slightly left of the 10 most commonly asked questions and one gets the "Look, love, we're just the call centre here" reply.

Then there is the automated voice messaging system. Press one to make a transaction, press two to leave a message (which no one clears), press three for the night bell (which no one answers) and so forth. Usually we can just hit 0 to speak to someone but sometimes this doesn't work. Don't even try to ring Airpoints if you have forgotten your Pin, membership number or access code. It'll be the most frustrating phonecall of your life.

The responsibility for customer interface has obviously been assigned to anti-social boffins who have in turn assumed everyone must prefer technology to humans.

However, apart from the minority with social phobias or technology fetishes people cause no major irritation. We often find people easier to operate than systems and we kind of like talking to them. Some of us are simply not interested in self-service petrol stations, preferring to be served by an attendant.

The international airport has recently installed new ticketing machines in the carpark which do everything a tollbooth operator does but deny us the opportunity for friendly exchange.

Staff are on hand to ease us into the new system but will probably be phased out in a few months once fuzzy logic deems that the whole of Auckland must surely have been to the car park and cottoned onto it.

Keeping up with the Joneses in a technical sense is a mandatory requirement for service organisations but it's people who make us feel special and who go the extra mile, not computers.

All this against a backdrop of unemployment issues. Along with the brain drain is there also a menial task drain?