Andrew_S_Hatton wrote on Mar 31
st, 2010 at 6:37pm:
I had already made the other point in conversation at home, however a Milton Keynesite has a better chance of knowing something about the location of Chelmsford than an Asian person, who I consulted about a train journey recently, he had no sense of UK geography and I was trying to decide whether to route a journey to Lake District from Essex with a stop off in Liverpool, via Warrington or Runcorn. After I spelt the name of the start station three times and helped him with pronunciation and he still had no idea where I meant, I just said thanks for trying and hung up.
This is a consequence of Call Centre Britain, and I just accept it now.
I would not read anything into the fact that the geographic number is a Milton Keynes one.
I have called the 0844 822 0002 and the 01908 849003, one, the latter being published by the Trust for overseas callers. I can confirm that they both answer with exactly the same IVR (menu).
Options are 1. wards; 2. Accident and Emergency; or hold for an operator (switchboard). I think it's fair to assume that selecting a ward number or Accident & Emergency will put you through to a respective 01245 number. Clearly, if I ring up to speak to ward 12 at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford the call won't be answered in Milton Keynes!
So I see no reason why the switchboard should be any different. It's quite likely that when you hold (as opposed to selecting option 1 or 2), then it forwards you to 01245…whatever.
In response to your other point about your experience with National Rail Enquires, I advocate people look-up timetables and the like online. This applies equally to many other services as well.
When you telephone a helpline, it is likely that the person you are speaking to provides information taken from a computer screen; they don't know it from the top of their head. These days, with the internet, the information can often be gleemed from websites.
The point you make is that the person you spoke to didn't know the geography and spelling of the origination and destination of your planned journey. Even if the person had been aware, they would still have consulted a computer to tell them the train times. They would then relay that information to you via speech down the telephone.
So the telephone is essentially adding another link to the chain of communication. You tell the person origination and destination stations, they input that into their computer and then read back (some of) the results that it returns. It's a very clumbersome and archaic process when you consider you can bring up the same information on your own computer in a matter of seconds.
There is lots of information there (e.g train timetables) and that which can be relayed verbally can be liked to viewing it (timetables) through a pin-hole.
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Mid Essex Hospital Trust abandons its 0844 numbers (Read 14,243 times)
