Just finished a marathon series of calls with Telstra...about 2 hours. It involved the migration of an old landline from 3G to 4G, mainly for the convenience of my wife who has certain disabilities. But that is just the background info. The real issue is the transfer of my call numerous times to different personnel who were involved in different aspects of the procedure. Not once did I speak to a person whose first language was English. Now I don't have a problem with that, they were all very helpful and friendly people. But the communication situation was less than optimal. I found myself having to rephrase my answers frequently because I could sense they weren't understanding me clearly sometimes, just as I had frequently to ask them to repeat a question. Now, this kind of interchange must be happening tens of thousands of times between people of different ethnicities as well as English speakers. I can just imagine how Centrelink has got itself into such a mess as has been reported in the media. Not only are they having to deal with a recession and the increased work flow that comes with that, they are having to do it on a multilingual basis. I don't know what the answer is, but a country that can't easily communicate within its own borders for official purposes is going to have major traffic snarls. Maybe AI can help with that.
