Sometimes I use my telephone to pay bills or make enquiries.
I am used to talking to an autowoman about train times. She doesn’t always understand what I’ve said.
Today, for the first time in my life, I rang Television Licensing to renew my licence. Another autowoman answered but she couldn’t understand me when I said my surname, so I had to hold the line for a while until I was put through to a real person. The payment was duly made but the only confirmation reference for it was the first name of the person who dealt with me.
By contrast, there are two organisations which I ring regularly and their programmes are well written and I make my payments to more autowomen, who lead me through the payment process perfectly and give me a reference number at the end.
These two are Anglian Water and SHDC Council Tax department.
I think Anglian Water give me an authorisation code and SHDC give me a reference number, and I have those in case of any queries in the future.
I have no idea of the names of the writers of their computer programmes, and I don’t suppose you do, either, but whoever they are: “Excellent, and thank you.”
Frances Richardson
Surfleet
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