Calling AT&T was interesting, for lack of a better explanation. They use an automated assistant to try to make the process quicker, but in reality, it doesn't listen very well, and it doesn't work if you have any background noise. I have a home with a dog and children, and I wouldn't say any more noise than the average family. Using this system was virtually impossible for me. I had to struggle to get through the system to finally get to a person, and then there was no wait. This tells me that they could have just sent me to a live agent and avoided all of the frustration.
I had to call AT&T to talk about a charge on my bill I didn't recognize. My bill changed a little, and I wanted to know why. It really was only a two-minute discussion, but it took me a while to get to the point where I could actually talk to someone. When I first called AT&T, I heard their trademark jingle, and then a recorded voice said, "Welcome to AT&T. Calls are recorded for quality and control monitoring. What is the issue you are calling about?"
I told the voice assistant, "Talk to a customer service agent." It then responded, "Okay, I can get you to an agent, but first I would like to use your phone number to look up your account. Is this the phone number associated with your account?" I told the voice assistant yes, and then it said, "Now before I connect you to an agent, can you give me more details about what you are calling about." I said, "Talk about a billing issue." This is where things started to go downhill.
It responded, "Billing, can you give me more details." Then I just said, "an issue on my bill," and it told me that it was getting my bill, which I didn't ask it to do. There was a pause; it said something about a $6 change and then asked if it worked. I said it didn't, and then it asked me again what I was calling about. We cycled through virtually the same discussion, and then it asked if there was anything else it could do for me. This time, I simply said, "I want to talk to an agent," because I didn't want to have one more cycle about the bill that wasn't working.
What is interesting is it said, "I'd be happy to connect you to one of our agents, but I would like you to know our wait times are longer than usual. Would you like to give this a try first?" I told it no, and then it said it would connect me, and the wait time is a minute. Why would I deal with a robot when it takes one minute to get to a person? Very frustrating, but after it transferred me, I finally got to a person who answered my questions quickly and was helpful.