Automated telephone answering isn't just a nuisance. It poses an ethical issue.
"Please select..."
We're all fed up with navigating tedious menus on the phone and rarely reaching an actual person. Automated answering is a nuisance, but is it an ethical problem?
I think it is, but remember the difference I mentioned between ethical and moral in a previous article: briefly, "morality" has to do with right conduct for everyone, while "ethics" now has to do mainly with right conduct for professionals providing services. This is why we now talk a lot about "medical ethics," "business ethics," and so on.
When we call government or corporate offices, we usually need to be told something or to tell someone something, so we approach them as service providers and there is an ethical duty to provide us with information we require and to listen to what we need to say.
Recently I tried to report a dead crow, as we've been asked to do because of bird flu. I almost gave up after calling three directory-listed city hall departments and wading through three sets of menus and sub-menus only to learn they weren't the right ones to call. I eventually got a person who gave me the number of the right department, but when I called, I not only got more menus, I ended up in voice mail. It took me thirty minutes to leave a message about the crow. I doubt many would have persisted as I did.
Automated answering levels the priority of calls because there's no one to judge if a call is routine or urgent. A few menus allow for emergency selections, but for one or two levels they're still automated. The exception is 911; there you get a person right off. But it won't be long before 911 is automated to some degree. Imagine calling when someone's breaking into your house and getting an automated menu.
Automated answering is cheaper than hiring and training people, and from the government or corporate side, it looks like all it does is let us direct our own calls rather than an operator doing it. But the economizing isn't just about directing calls; it's mainly about fewer people answering phones, because usually you end up on hold.
We're all taxpayers and corporations make money on all of us, and both governments and corporations are cheating us on the service they owe us as citizens and consumers when they discourage or duck our calls.
