INDIA VISA AGAIN
One more letter from the VFS Global warning us once again that our applications are incomplete followed by a day of panicked working to resend a requested form (we sent it last week by Fed Ex for $67, carefully following their instructions).
But I’m finally aware that it is not filling out the form that is difficult. It is doing it on line when we are trying to use two different computer programs, Apple and Microsoft, and have trouble translating one to the other as well as doing things on line that we have never done before or will probably need to do again.
The real problem is that are being asked to learn a completely new way of operating on line that is like learning a foreign language. What is happening, and I see this everywhere, is that companies of all kinds are trying to streamline and pass off answering questions first to a machine and then after the client is hopelessly confused, to a low paid worker in the Philippines. The client who is now responsible for any mistake, no refunds for errors, usually has no idea what he is doing and has to figure out the website as if he were learning Chinese. Panera was doing this when they refused to allow a person to answer how I could cancel my subscription by first having me ask questions to which a machine offered preset answers I could click on, none of them useful. Airlines do this by insisting that I chat with a virtual assistant until I give up on getting my money back or if I persist and push enough buttons finally pass me off to a real person. Their intention is to avoid endless repetition of the same questions and answers by having a machine give the answers and then, if I haven’t given up, turn over any questions the machine can’t answer to a person. Instead of having me talk with someone in the Philippines, which is another irritating cross-cultural way to lower costs through outsourcing, they are going to turn me over to a machine to work me over before I ever get to the person in the Philippines. But in making things cheaper and presumably more efficient by out sourcing first to artificial intelligence and then to a cheerful girl in the Philippines, the ordinary, non-technical person who wants help is being forced to function in a new technological way that is almost like learning another language of PDFs or downloaded and uploaded forms or digital photographs of no more than 1 MB.
VFS Global, in wanting to make sure that they have have no technical problems with our visa applications warn us again and again not to make any mistakes while at the same time insisting that we learn their new digital way of recording our information which forces us to stop again and again to find a way to do what they want. In the old days we downloaded the forms, printed them up, filled them out by hand and sent them back by mail. It took 15 minutes. Now we struggle with computerese through increasing rising anxiety and confusion and spend four hours and then at the end get it wrong and are told to do it again. All the while, I’m sure, whoever it is that is processing the applications believes that they are being direct and straightforward and acting in the most efficient way.
Probably in ten years when Artificial Intelligence finally becomes intelligent and can answer any question asked of it, the system will become efficient and will eliminate someone having to answer the same mind numbing repeated questions again and again. It will make it much more pleasant for the client to apply. It will save the company money. And it will also put that girl in the Philippines, who is cheerfully doing a job she needs to support her family, out of a job.
That is what I learned to day.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 