I had a parcel delivered a few days ago.
That’s not very exciting, you might think.
And to be honest, you’d be right. It wasn’t anything special.
But if you’d been bombarded by all the emails that I received preceding its arrival, you might have thought differently.
It must have been something really significant.
Or even something of questionable legality?
The first email arrived just a day after I ordered the item, timed at an unbelievable 1.02 am! No, I didn’t notice that at the time. Like most of the population, I wasn’t awake.
It was not especially noteworthy anyway – it was from a delivery firm and simply said, ‘We are expecting your parcel.’
Well, so was I, so I didn’t find that particularly informative.
It then continued, ‘We’ll let you know when we have it.’
To be honest, I was perfectly happy to continue my day without that information. But sure enough, that evening I received an email advising me, ‘We’ve received your parcel. We’ll let you know when it’s out for delivery.’
Subsequent messages arrived over the next few days, peppering my inbox with a log of its progress through a mail sorting hub, a parcel depot, and then finally a local delivery firm.
Then one day the parcel arrived on my doorstep.
That was it. That’s all that happened. A completely normal, unremarkable occurrence. Nothing to see here. Move on.
But that wasn’t the end of the messages.
Another followed stating the rather obvious, ‘We delivered your parcel today.’
That got me thinking: at my advanced age I must have had hundreds of parcels delivered over the years. Almost all have successfully arrived without my being aware of, or much caring about, their travels through the labyrinthine workings of the postal system.
I haven’t needed a week of messages diarising the various stations en route which, when you think about it, are basically telling me simply that the parcel hasn’t arrived yet.
I have, after all, been able to see that for myself.
And what I find intriguing, even disturbing, is that the people behind these messages assume they are doing me a favour.
They seem pleased about it, even to the extent of sending a follow-up query.
You’ve probably had one yourself: shortly after the parcel arrives you receive a message, ‘How did our courier do?’
Or perhaps, ‘Tell us about your delivery experience.’
Courier?
I always thought a courier was a specially selected messenger carrying diplomatic or sensitive documents.
Or perhaps a shady character employed by criminals to deliver questionable or illicit items.
In my case the ‘courier’ appeared to be a delivery driver in a van.
Maybe it was clever disguise.
And my experience? That’s a tricky one. How do you rate, ‘He got out of his van, left the parcel in the porch, and drove off’?
And it’s not just parcels. You may have noticed this sort of follow-up messaging seems to be happening in almost every sphere of life now.
In fact, it’s becoming so prevalent that I’ve decided it warrants a name.
For want of a better moniker I’ll call it Tucker’s Hypothesis.
This basically states that because technological advances make it possible to send you information or notifications, then they will be sent, even if you don’t want them.
Essentially, if technology makes something possible, then it will be implemented, not because it’s necessary or of use, but to show that it’s possible. To show how clever the technology is.
You may have noticed the same principle applies to apps that have been developed to work on mobile phones.
There are all sorts of apps developed for these devices of course. Some enable the user to listen to music, some display American news updates, some share photos and so on. And of course there are some people who actually want them.
But my hypothesis states that because these apps CAN work on mobile phones, they WILL be installed, on your phone too, even if you don’t ask for or want them.
In fact the developers seem unable to comprehend that you might not want them.
It explains why, every time you update your mobile phone software, new and unknown icons mysteriously appear on your screen without you having any idea what many of them are or how they got there.
The same applies to any ‘smart’ device. If you own a smart watch you might find it now tells you what altitude you have reached during your commute to work, as if you need to know.
And whether you slept well the night before, as if you weren’t there at the time.
In fact a watch can now tell you that you have received an email, and even answer phone calls, as long as you have a phone nearby.
This latter fact seems, to me, to ignore an obvious question. If you need a phone nearby, why not let the phone receive the calls? This is, after all, its original raison d’etre.
Why set up a phone to transmit calls to a watch?
The answer is simple: because it CAN be done.
And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the technology which generates unnecessary follow-ups has now even spread to local establishments in Guernsey.
I realised that after I phoned my Guernsey mobile phone provider recently with a simple query. I received a quick answer and didn’t think any more about it. It was a simple, unremarkable, everyday occurrence.
But a few days later an email appeared in my inbox.
‘Thank you for your recent call to our contact centre. Please let us know how we did by taking this short survey.’
Never mind a hypothesis, it’s becoming an epidemic.
Essentially, as soon as a company has your phone number or email address, you are a target for endless requests asking, ‘How did we do?’ or ‘Rate your experience’.
Of course these messages are not sent by a real person, they are automatically generated by a computer programme, or what these days might be termed AI.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it is extremely unlikely that there is a real person sending the message, eager to learn about your ‘experience’.
It even happened recently with an email from a local supermarket, asking me to rate my shopping experience.
As I frequently pop into the shop on my way home I was not sure which ‘experience’ they were referring to. But did they really want to know my view of their quick tills, which on many occasions are anything but quick?
You know the ones, those self-service tills which refuse to read a barcode, or which can’t see that you’re over 18 despite having a camera full in your face, or which make you wait for a human being to come because it thinks your own bag is an unknown item in the bagging area.
And do they really want to know what it’s like for a mother who pops into the shop after picking the kids up from school, to find the supermarket has rearranged the shelves so items are not in their normal place, and when halfway down the fruit aisle one child announces he’s left his lunch box at school, while the other declares in a loud voice that she needs to go to the toilet?
After all, if we haven’t experienced it personally I’m sure most of us have witnessed those occasions, when it is evident that a child does not want to go supermarket shopping with Mum. A feeling which, not unsurprisingly, is reciprocated.
I may however be able to offer you one slight crumb of comfort in all this. Although the practice of follow-up survey messages seems to have spread to Guernsey, I think it is unlikely to be adopted by the States of Guernsey.
After all, surely not even an emotionally-vacant, machine-brained AI program would risk asking, ‘How do you rate our performance in spending £42m. of your money on an ineffective IT system?’
Or can you imagine a message from Traffic and Highway Services?
‘You may have noticed we recently closed your road for four weeks. How would you rate your experience of using our diversions?’
And it seems there would be little point in the Income Tax department sending out such survey requests. After all, it might be years before they get round to reading any of the replies.
Talking of reading, I should like to add that I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my musings on this subject.
It’s not often that I receive feedback on things that I write, so perhaps I could ask you to rate your experience of reading this article.
Or perhaps not?
