EVER had the sneaky feeling that technology, which is supposed to make life easier, doesn't?
Especially the advances that are supposed to get people to link up better.
It is a double-edged sword to be sure but, at its worst, e-mail, cellphones and instant messaging are technologies of isolation rather than connection.
For instance, a friendly holler across the cubicle to a colleague has been reduced to a feverish hammering on the keyboard to pass that "instant" message - even though both people are seated only two desks away from each other.
Of all the communication smarts out there, it is dialling technology that drives me up the wall.
I'm talking hotlines, which turn you cold by the time a human voice comes on 10 minutes later - if at all (because you may have hung up).
The call I made last week to an airline "hotline" takes the cake. The first thing that greeted me was this: "We have changed our system. Please listen carefully for your menu options.
"For reservations, press blah, blah, blah..."
Next thing: You get through, explain that you cannot book seats online because the system is down, but the hotline is cut off.
You call again and this time a voice tells you he is taking your call from India (or, in my other experiences, the Philippines, or wherever it is that companies park their call centres).
As far as businesses are concerned, it makes perfect sense to put their call centres in countries where salaries are cheaper.
But where customers are concerned, cultural misreadings are an underrated pain.
A videoclip on YouTube on the woes of call centre customers makes this point nicely.
"When can you call me back, please?"
"No problem, ma'am, I will call you back ass-ap," says the voice.
The worst thing about call centres and hotlines, though, is that many of the hosts - what the people who man the phones are called - seem to be little more than droids.
They seem to read from set texts and cannot deviate from the "system's protocol".
Last month's Sydney courts' ruling on the death of David Iredale makes a sobering point.
The 17-year-old had gone on a Blue Mountains bushwalk in a school excursion on Dec 11, 2006 but got lost.
Seven cellphone calls made within 90 minutes to emergency call operators failed to get a chopper to rescue him.
The operators, as he lay dying of dehydration, had insisted on an exact "street address".
The growth of Singapore's contact centre applications market gives only the business side of the picture.
It grew by 23.8 per cent to US$20.2 million (S$29.2 million) in 2008, despite the challenging economic conditions, according to a study by Frost & Sullivan.
In The Business Times on May 25, the research consultancy added that the financial services and insurance as well as telco sectors will continue to be big users of these services, given that Singapore is a financial and business hub.
What studies should be querying, I say, is the level of service offered.
Without any meaningful human touch, such research is just numbers to me.
eveyap@sph.com.sg
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.
