Will TVs replace receptionists?
I’m still flying high from the adrenaline created by a second straight Warren County football victory Friday night. So how ’bout them Pioneers.
Not in my wildest dreams did I think a Warren County team would put 50 points on the board, and that’s not to suggest my wildest dreams involve high school football games.
There is, however, something invigorating about a winning high school football team. It creates pride, even for the fans like me who have absolutely nothing to do with the team. But I’ll still tell folks “we” beat Smithville like I was the one out there playing tailback.
As for news that’s just a bit off the wall, most of us have probably dealt with an Indian call center by now. These call centers are used by U.S. companies so when their American customers have a question about a product, they can talk to someone halfway across the world who barely speaks English.
Believe it or not, this concept has even been used by fast-food restaurants in their drive-thru windows. When a customer places an order at the speaker, they are actually talking to someone in India who sends the order back to the restaurant. Some restaurants have studied this and found orders actually get processed faster when sent to India as opposed to being taken by someone standing 20 feet away.
With that bit of information as a backdrop, a Pakistani company has taken this call-center approach one step further. The company is called The Research Group and it has established an office in Washington, D.C.
To illustrate its services, The Research Group doesn’t have a receptionist at its office. Instead, in the area normally occupied by a receptionist, there’s a big-screen TV. On the TV is a receptionist who cheerfully greets visitors, gives directions, and even places lunch orders. Yet the receptionist is sitting in an office in Pakistan and is communicating through the wonders of closed-circuit TV.
This is the point where I can’t resist inserting my own opinion which is: “ARGHHHH!” It’s bad enough we’re losing our manufacturing jobs overseas. Now they’re taking aim at our receptionists too. No job is safe.
It’s just spooky to think about walking into a place of business and talking to a TV screen instead of a person – a TV screen with a Pakistani lady no less. I already can’t stand the companies which no longer have a real person answering the phones. You call the main number and immediately get a company directory to try and navigate. If this keeps up, there won’t be any way to talk to a “real person,” at least not one in this country.
In one final observation, the trend among retail stores is to offer one-stop shopping where you can find anything you need under one roof, provided its made in China. The discount chain Costco is really taking this one-stop shopping thing seriously.
In addition to its 99-cent line, Costco is now offering original artwork from Picasso. Costco has obtained a Picasso piece from 1958 and has placed it on its Web site. As you might expect, this vintage artwork is being offered for the retail price of $129,999.99 as opposed to simply selling it for $130,000.