Peter Jackson column

Aug 24 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Technology's onward march, particularly in the area of communications, undoubtedly brings with it many benefits.

Sadly, it also gives rise to whole new ways of annoying customers.

Or at least it does since businesses decided to deny those customers any initiative in the process of communication but confine them to a largely reactive role.

This is the purpose of those automated switchboards which present callers with a rambling decision tree of options before leaving them in the company of a robotic voice interminably reassuring them that their call is valued.

Nobody likes them and I marvel that companies, which must be aware of the blind fury they provoke, persist in installing them.

The Internet also presents businesses with golden opportunities for alienating those who buy their services.

Unsurprisingly, these opportunities are grasped most eagerly by technology companies themselves, especially those in IT. They clearly regard the telephone as so-oo 20th Century that they decline to provide any telephone contact details at all on their websites, denying their customers even the chance of being infuriated by an automated switchboard.

One of the problems with this conspiracy to stonewall, frustrate and baffle is that the consumers come to expect it and, when making an inquiry or complaint, begin in a state of barely suppressed rage.

At least those of us rapidly approaching the age of miserable-old-gittishness do.

Take the beginning of last week. Only 24 hours away from taking a flight and anxious about the security scare with cancelled flights and baggage restrictions I consulted Newcastle Airport's website for guidance.

I was infuriated to find none, so I dashed off a quick email - the only means of communication offered on the site. I said how disgraceful I found it that, at a time like this, the only news it could offer visitors related to new car parking facilities.

Upon my return home I found a polite reply from advertising and marketing officer Belinda McGill, thanking me for my feedback and pointing out that they were under no obligation to make any changes to their security procedures as they were a regional airport in New South Wales, Australia.

Our own Newcastle International Airport had, of course, promptly posted all the information the traveller could require.