On the Frustrations of Automated Systems

As some of you may know, I am a college student. Being a college student, but not having any real money, you could then conclude that I take out a fair amount of student loans (so that I can be owned by the system indefinitely, but whatever). Your assumptions would be correct.

Recently I applied for a new student loan with SallieMae. While I'm happy with what they offer, their online process of loan applications is less than satisfactory. That is to say, their entire system is very thoroughly automated. However, like all automated systems, if you haven't considered all scenarios, you're bound to create a very frustrating customer experience.

While I was filling out my loan information, I must have checked off a box incorrectly. For some reason, SallieMae's automated system was convinced that I was not a citizen of the US, when in fact I am. I got all this paperwork telling me to send a copy of my permanent resident card before I could continue with the process.

I called all the numbers available on their website a good number of times. I tried many different options, but they all eventually lead me to entering in my account info, which would then always send me back to this same message about how I need to photocopy and send them pictures of my resident card. The only way I was able to finally get through to a human being was to pretend like I was starting a new loan over the phone. I was worried about doing this because I thought it might further complicate my problem for them to have two loans in process under my name.

However, soon after I started -that- process I was connected to a human. Once I was connected to an actual person, fixing my problem just took a couple questions and a couple of minutes. Presto!

Perhaps this is just a bit of social commentary on the techno-bureaucratization of our society. Maybe this is a short note to companies trying to streamline their customer service processes. Regardless, while I have great faith in the potential of automated systems, it just makes sense to have a real human being easily available to watch the process and be available.