This has always bugged me. An item cannot have an order by itself; it has order only in relation to other items. Shouldn't it be "Calls are answered in the order received" or is that no difference at all?

Every single call-in line is "experiencing higher than normal call volume" all of the time. If it happens so often, then that would be the "normal" call volume, wouldn't it?

And how about the ones that now ask you to provide a number that they will call back instead of waiting on hold?

Since I am retired, I am fortunate to have health care thru my company. Had to call last week to HR and kept on hearing that canned voice for about 45 minutes. Thank god for speaker phone.

You are right. Calls will be answered in the order they are received. I never put much thought into it because that statement is usually preceeded by "Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line...". After about 5 minutes, I start thinking if my call is really important to you, you would have a person answer the phone. After the first half hour, I start calling BS on my call being important. Once past the one hour mark, I start wondering how we got to this point.

Is it my imagination, or was there a point in time where good customer service meant a human answering the phone by the third ring?

I guess you could look at it from their point of view. They have a bunch of calls in the cue and adding your call to that group would give it a relationship to those calls. No?

What bugs me is not understanding the person that ends up answering it.

 
And everyone's menu options have changed.

Wait until AI takes over customer service calls.

They'll answer your call right away. They'll give you nice cordial replies that will be of absolutely no use for situations that require a solution outside of the preprogrammed answers.

No managers, no way to escalate it and the good news is that you can cuss and berate the AI and it'll keep replying until you give up out of frustration because your time is more valuable than the bandwidth the call takes.

These messages are two-fold. A) they really want no part of you whatsoever B) This business has way too much business and doesn't really need you.

So the question I ask, is do I REALLY need them? Many times the answer is yes, unfortunately.

quote:

They'll answer your call right away. They'll give you nice cordial replies that will be of absolutely no use for situations that require a solution outside of the preprogrammed answers.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is already here. Call some insurance companies.

Happened to me just yesterday. Robo voice said it could help and my response every time was AGENT. Was on hold for quite a while and then call finally answered by someone in the Philippines. Upside is she answered my questions without putting me on hold for 5 minutes. That said, I dislike the automated systems.

You would think they would hopefully answer their calls in the order they were received and not just randomly or at their convenience. I believe the IRS uses some sort of random call answering system with a built in waiting cue that is at least 90 minutes long.

What’s arguably as bad as the hoops you have to jump through to get a human on the phone is when they say this rather than answer your question.

Most of you who have responded have answered questions I did not ask. My question is about grammar, and nothing else. I didn't post this so we could all complain about being on hold, or the questionable competence of the people on the other end of the phone.

I suspect in their minds there is no difference, but in the first example, the term "will be answered" would indicate that the call is answered at some point and in the order received. The term "are answered" would indicate that, if or when, they are answered, it will be in the order received. One term is a little more definitive that the other.

I don't know that "your call will be answered" is technically incorrect. Just because two of the words used, standing alone, refer to a single thing (your call), does that necessarily exclude your call from being a part of a group? The use of "will be answered" and "order received" also imply there are others ahead of you, otherwise, why wasn't your call answered in the first place? It implies that your call is one of many, and thus will be arranged in some order. I do agree with you that "calls will be answered" is probably better English, because it directly refers to the group of calls, rather than making an inference. More clear and concise.

I know zero shits about English grammar so...

Would , "Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received" be correct? Better?

Or is that more words saying the same damn thing?

I know there is a College Egnlish Professor on the forum...

No, because that rephrasing still indicates one call only, not a series.

It's as grammatically incorrect as saying "they" for a singular person.

I suppose the context and what is left out is... relative to all the other calls we get.

I can see if it was changed to "calls will be answered in the order received," someone will complain "What about MY call?"

I agree that "Your call will be answered in the order received" is incorrect, since a single call cannot be received in a particular order.

As said, ... "Calls are answered in the order received" ... makes more sense.