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Kripa Raman

Getting in touch with people in modern offices could be exasperating because there's no effective replacement for the personal secretary.

TECHNICAL aids could dispense with quite a few employees in an organisation and appear to save time for it. However, due to a mismatch in the training of organisations in the use of these technologies and the capabilities of the technologies themselves, getting in touch with anyone in many a modern corporate house has become more exasperating than ever before. The so-called 24-hour customer call centres are equally inaccessible, undermanned as they are and untrained as they appear to be in proper use of databases.

Dial the boardline of a typical corporate house and you get a voice which asks you to dial the extension of the person you wish to reach. Since senior executives are mostly on the move, either without or within their offices, or in a meeting, dialling their extension to a mailbox diverts the caller to his mailbox which is invariably full. "Sorry, the mail box is full. Please dial again later," says a recorded voice. The operator, if accessed, again directs the caller to the same extension and to the same overflowing voicemail box. Says a marketing executive with a telecom networking company: "Unless you know the personal mobile numbers of other executives, it is impossible to reach them. Don't they require people to get in touch with them? I wonder how some organisations do business at all."

The modern telephone system in which the direct line and the extension lines of one person carry the same last digits appear to be even worse; calls move straight to the person's cabin or desk and to the same full mailbox. Since many modern offices have dispensed with personal secretaries, there is just about nobody to answer the call or to take a message.

"There must be foolproof systems for at least recording that such and such a person had called," says a middle-level executive with a brokerage firm. "Even if I do not want to talk to most of the callers, I must at least know who are the people who have called. But my mail box gets full in two hours' time when I am not here and I never get to know who the subsequent callers are since we do not have a full-time secretary or telephone person to personally answer these calls and take down messages."

The much-talked about 24-hour customer call centres, especially those of the service industry, are particularly bad. Not all the technology seems to have breached their inaccessibility. Any customer of Orange or BPL Mobile or MTNL would tell you how long the average holding time is. Orange customer care centres sometimes open with the line "Your waiting time is 15 minutes", then the holding music is frequently interrupted with a voice that keeps thanking you for holding on and that you must hold on because their customers are very precious, and such like.

And when the call is answered, the complaint is taken down meticulously by someone called say, Sonali, and the caller is asked to return the call after15 minutes. After 15 minutes and an additional holding time of 15 minutes, the call is then answered by say, Brian, who somehow cannot access your earlier complaint and who has to be briefed all over again.

"It is after this that many people decide to go in for a prepaid service," admits a middle-level executive with a cellular company.

"Services must realise that if they are complaining they have fewer post- paid customers, it is partly their own fault. These customers must be serviced better."

A senior official with MTNL involved with the company's upcoming call service centres says many telephonic customer care centres do not comply with the international COPC (customer operations performance center) norms. These specify minimum efficiency levels and involve client certification and end-user certification. Finally, the greatest of technologies needs the human touch for its use and direction, and this is where the failing lies, he says.

kripram@thehindu.co.in

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