Digital service?

When you call the bank, do you like the endless computer voice menus? You listen, press the "appropriate" number, listen, another number, and finally, you get to the part where they say "To speak with an officer, press 0" and you breathe a sigh of relief and happily press 0.

We are people, and when we call for service, we don't want to be fobbed off to some moronic machine wasting our time asking us irrelevant questions in a computerized voice.

And we all know why this is happening.... cost!

It seems that we are important as customers, oh sure, as we are continuously told, but we are not important enough to simply have a real person answer the phone when we call the help line.
Now maybe the banks can get away with it because they do have us all locked in and if we go to the bank across the street, we will only get the same thing.

However, in the Localization industry, the same strategy is being applied and more and more companies are rushing into the digital handling of translation projects in an effort to reduce costs. Installing a "system” is even being touted as a great thing and that everyone should be welcoming this great "modernization" of the industry.

If you were wanting the services of any professional because you had a specific need or problem and you call them up, how impressed are you and how likely are you to do business with them when they clearly demonstrate that they don't want to invest a little time with you to discuss it at the outset because they have shed staff to keep costs down and profits up. If you do go ahead, would you be impressed with just posting your important information to an online system and then just hoping for the best?

Every company has only one mission that is critical to the success of the business - create and then retain customers. You don't do that by taking out the people with the expertise and thinking that a computer can conduct the business for you!