I don’t know if this picture has been modified or not, but if it hasn’t just think of what this means!!!  Maybe heaven really is in a van down by the river!

Chris Farley reincarnated?

I just got off the phone with USAA, where we have our homeowners and auto insurance and numerous investment accounts. Even though they’re located in San Antonio, I REALLY like the convenience that their website offers to manage all those things, even together with our local credit union accounts and because they cater to military and their dependents, their rates are almost always lower than anything we’ve found for us at this stage of our lives.

However, I’m very disappointed with them now, because since the last time I called them for some support, they’ve gone to an IVR system. You may not know it by that term, but that’s the technology where you call a company and you have to talk to a recorded voice to get where you want to go. Maybe I’m too old school or something but these systems drive me completely crazy! One reason is that I hear myself sounding like a robot as I say “Banking . . . Investments . . . Brokerage Services . . .”. Another is that NO ONE IS LISTENING TO ME!!! I’m not talking to a person. The “person” on the other end is just taking a recording of my voice and breaking it down into digital bits and processing it to decide where to send me. You all know I’m not a talkative person anyway. It’s hard enough for me to talk to other people , now I have to talk to a machine??? And it seems as though more and more companies are going this route. I’m not even asking to talk to a real person! Just let me push buttons. Tell me which number to push for Banking, then for investments, then for brokerage services. I’ll push all 3 of them. It’s not like talking to a recorded voice saves me any time!

I would feel completely different about it if the systems were smart enough for me to just tell what I wanted, like “Uh, yeah, let me talk to someone about my brokerage account.” Nice and easy and it could send me right to a brokerage services account agent. That would be great! But as it is, I have to listen to the whole menu of options and the word I need to say for each particular option anyway. JUST LIKE I DO IF I’M GOING TO RESPOND WITH A BUTTON PUSH. So why is it better? Have we become so lazy that it’s too hard for us to lift our hand and push the proper button on the keypad? I can’t imagine this is true. So the only reason I can see for adopting this technology is if it saved the consumer time. BUT IT DOESN’T!!!

I’m not even asking to talk to a real live person (although, this does make me long for the days of a few years ago where contacting virtually any technology company by phone, meant speaking to someone with an Indian accent who had never set foot in America before — but that’s a whole ‘nother topic). No, just take me back to the good old push button days where I can let my fingers do the walking – and talking! Well, fortunately for us IVR haters there’s a great website I just found. GetHuman.com. This contains the “secret codes” for tons of the big companies out there to get you directly to a customer service agent, whether they’re in India or not. Check it out.  Some are kind of funny and make you wonder “how did they figure THAT out?”

And tell me if I’m just too old school. I’m 32 years old, and technically a Gen-X’er, but sometimes (like with text messaging – I’ll blog on that another time) I know I can sound like a grumpy old man.