In the Budget Chancellor Rachel Reeves talked a lot about boosting growth and improving the country’s sluggish productivity, a long-standing issue.
The UK’s output per worker is less than that of the US, France and Germany. All kinds of measures have been or will be proposed, mostly higher taxes.
I have a simpler solution. There would be an immediate boost to the economy if Brits took their phones and used them for their original purpose, which is to talk to each other.
Amid the flood of text messages, emails, social media posts and photographs, people, especially young people, have forgotten why phones were invented: to make calls.
If we want to get things done and decided quickly, we need to talk more. Not only for the economy but also for our mental health. We are in an epidemic of loneliness.
The situation is made worse by factors such as working from home and companies eager to reduce overheads, whatever the consequences. The best solution is for people to meet in person, but if not, the sound of a human voice would do wonders.
Most young adults wouldn’t even think about making a call or even answering one. If you call them, they see it as intrusive and almost hostile.
A quarter of people between 18 and 34 never answer a phone; this even seems to cover FaceTime video calls. But even middle-aged people and baby boomers are starting to feel that it’s okay to avoid speech over various forms of texting.
If we want to get things done and decided quickly, we need to talk more. Not only for the economy but also for our mental health. We are in an epidemic of loneliness.
A pet hate is when you call someone and they order you not to leave a voicemail, but instead to send them a text. It’s very rude to expect the caller to make all the effort, and why? What’s so difficult about listening to a voice message? Are your eardrums so delicate that they cannot withstand the assault?
An even more serious point is that companies are equally reluctant to talk to their own customers.
This is self-harm on your part: the benefits would be considerable if there were more in-person chatting and less texting and direct messaging on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, X/Twitter and the rest.
These platforms seem to offer immediacy and speed of contact.
But all too often they are a source of delays and displacement.
When did it become normal to send an email, or a WhatsApp asking if it would be okay to call someone and, if so, make an appointment for this intrusion into your personal space? It’s not like you’re proposing to knock down the front door of their house.
And having been able to obtain this privilege, why should it be necessary to send a follow-up email stating everything you just described?
Maybe there should be some Treasury model of hours wasted composing an email when a quick call would fix the problem in minutes.
Part of this aversion to improvised communication is the legacy of pandemic lockdowns.
Working from home made a call from the office feel like an invasion of privacy, as social and professional contact shifted to Zoom or Teams.
These systems are enormously convenient, but the setup can lack spontaneity. Instead of conveying information, more confident people often act out, underscoring their superiority. Younger staff may be intimidated and fall into embarrassed or resentful silence.
As for consumer complaints or queries, wouldn’t it be great if a company answered the phone in a reasonable amount of time? No chance. They want to save money by discouraging phone calls, so they try to persuade us to use the chatbot messaging route on their website or app.
Don’t you realize that no one calls a banking or insurance helpline for fun? If customers have problems that can be resolved with online FAQs, they will do so and not call.
But standard answers are generated by artificial intelligence and rarely effectively answer a real-life question. The covert goal is to get the customer to give up, leave, and never have the temerity to bother you again.
In an unguarded moment, one banker described customers who tried to speak to a real person as “abusing the phone.” Heaven forbid the account holders, who are the reason you receive a large salary and bonuses, expect any service.
The interested party may regret this observation. But it inspired me to commit some telephone “abuse.”
My insurer was trying to increase the premium on my home and buildings policy by 30 percent, believing that I would automatically accept this well-above-inflation increase, which occurred without additional coverage and was not prompted by a claim.
I dialed the number, fended off all attempts to force me to use the website, and managed to get the increase down to 2 percent.
Being carefully polite helps on these occasions. Long wait times at banks and other insurance companies can mean customers become angry and take it out on call center employees, who are short-staffed to keep costs down so their bosses can pocket their bonuses. .
By making it almost impossible to talk to anyone, banks, insurers and other companies behave as if they are doing us a favor by letting us talk to a human being, instead of providing us with the service they should.
These barriers are exacerbated by the difficulty of reaching someone.
Instead of improving, the mobile signal appears to be deteriorating, with the UK’s 5G speeds ranking 21st out of 25 European countries.
As the Financial Times observed earlier this year: “It’s less about getting 4G or 5G phone coverage, and more about whether you have any G.”
This must urgently change if we are to achieve growth in the economy, or even talk to our friends and family.
London is a global city whose business is business. But even in parts of the West End and the City, the mobile signal can be so poor that trying to make a call is pointless. In some rural areas of the country things are just as bad or worse.
Mobile telephone operators mention difficulties with the installation of antennas.
But above all they are evasive: mergers between operators are always accompanied by promises of more investment, but what happens is that we pay more and there is no improvement.
We urgently need better connectivity to ensure that Britain appears attractive to businesses who would like to invest here but may be shocked by the lack of signal even in city centres.
While writing this article, I received about 170 emails through three different systems, several WhatsApps, a voice note (creepy, in my opinion, whoever the sender is), and a single call.
On that solitary call, which lasted five minutes, we exchanged some news, some gossip (unbelievable, actually), decided on a course of action on a job, and agreed on a date for breakfast. Effective, reassuring, fast. It’s good to talk. Are you listening, Rachel?
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