I am absolutely fed up with automated phone queues and answering services
I deal with them all the time due to my medical issues and they aren't efficient in the least. For instance, I had a staffer from my pulmonologist's office leave voicemail saying she was calling about the 20 percent owed on an upcoming doctor's appointment.
I returned her call and had to go through 120 seconds of filtering and pushing buttons leaving my birthdate, name, phone number, voicemail, et cetera and I am still having to wait for a return call. This doesn't save me time at all. Quite the opposite.
Fifteen years ago, I would have returned the staffer's initial call, told the receptionist answering the call to connect to the other staffer, then quickly told the second person why I was calling and merely given her my credit card number over the phone to go ahead and pay the fee. The entire exchange would have taken far less time.
So who is this more efficient for? Not for the patients. The only thing I can see as its selling point is that it allows doctors to streamline staff, but those savings aren't passed on to patients either. My medical bills have not dropped since the advent of this technology.
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