I’ve placed calls to KCP&L and the Kansas City Star in the past week. Both robot operators told me to “Listen closely, as our menu has changed.”
I’ve heard this message many times from other automated greetings. Why is the menu changing so much? Are there new things on the menu? Or is it something far more sinister?
The point of a robot operator is to prevent you from talking to the human operators, who make their livings by getting you off the phone as soon as possible, so they can move onto the next person who beat the system to talk to a real person.
By changing the menu, companies prevent frequent callers from memorizing the sequence of numbers necessary to reach a fleshy operator. You will pay attention and earn your way to the customer service rep, cheaters.
I used to just pound on the number 9 and they would forward me to a real person. Sadly nowadays that usually just causes those automated systems to hang up on you. 🙁