I'm just as guilty as anyone, at times I relie on my Voice Mail to take calls that I should deal with and it would be over. Round & round we go ... My daughter (she's 23) made a comment & question the other day when she said "Voicemail, Txt Messenging, EMail, Facebook have all come together to fundimentaly change how we deal with people... especially colse friends... everything is so instant... something happens to one & everyone knows within minutes. How did you ever survive with out those services? How true... how did we ever survive!
For all of you who'd love to choke the #$%&*(^$#@ out of the inventer of voicemail... HERE IS PETER!!!!
As the man generally regarded as the father of the automated switchboard, Peter Theis knows he has a lot to answer for.
"I'm the guy who did it, yeah," 70-year-old Theis said. "I am ultimately to blame. I'm Dr. Frankenstein."
It's a bit more complicated than that, of course. The technology that many consumers believe serves no purpose but to prevent them from reaching a living, breathing service rep is in fact an electronic stew of a variety of systems.
"When I invented it, I knew this would be huge," he told me. "My goal was to improve the efficiency of call centers. I never thought that people would misapply the technology."
I've been wrestling with automated switchboards as I try to set up phone service, TV service, Internet service and every other service for our new house in Los Angeles (a.k.a. the money sponge).
Time Warner Cable's machine hung up on me no fewer than three times before I finally got through to a human being who could answer a few questions.
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