Caller ID
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So what's the deal with Caller ID not being a standard feature for every business everywhere?
I just called a restaurant to get a reservation. They asked for my phone number. I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Though I must say, this isn't the worst example I've seen of it. The worst has to go to the time I was asked for a callback number from the customer service department of... Verizon. There's zero excuse for the freaking phone company to not know the number of someone calling them!
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
How does that still happen in 2021?
I assume the default PBX-like configurations don't have that enabled by default for
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
The worst has to go to the time I was asked for a callback number
I don't always call from the number I want a callback on. (For instance, I called from my home phone, but need the callback on my cell because I'm going out)
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I just called a restaurant to get a reservation. They asked for my phone number. I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Or, you know, they're just answering you on a phone like this:
Or, more likely, a hands free headset and the base station isn't anywhere within eyesight of them.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Not all phones have displays.
It'd be a bigger
if you were calling a call centre where there's a reasonable expectation of such a thing but not a restaurant.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
The worst has to go to the time I was asked for a callback number
I don't always call from the number I want a callback on. (For instance, I called from my home phone, but need the callback on my cell because I'm going out)
Sure. But it was the same story. I said "this number" and the operator didn't know what that was.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I just called a restaurant to get a reservation. They asked for my phone number. I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Or, you know, they're just answering you on a phone like this:
Or, more likely, a hands free headset and the base station isn't anywhere within eyesight of them.
In that case, they're on a computer. And the computer should have the phone number of the person calling.
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There's one girl who always shows up on my phone as Private Number. I always know it's her because no one else withholds that info.
Filed under: And I already know her phone number, but she has it blocked by default.
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@loopback0 said in Caller ID:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Not all phones have displays.
It'd be a bigger if you were calling a call centre where there's a reasonable expectation of such a thing but not a restaurant.Business phones do. Even if they're crappy old school green-and-black dot-matrix screens, business phones do have displays. And I happen to know, from previous experience at the restaurant in question, that they have a business phone at the reception desk, which I assume is where I ended up calling.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I just called a restaurant to get a reservation. They asked for my phone number. I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Or, you know, they're just answering you on a phone like this:
Or, more likely, a hands free headset and the base station isn't anywhere within eyesight of them.
In that case, they're on a computer. And the computer should have the phone number of the person calling.
Unless the restaurant does heavy delivery work, they probably can't justify the cost of the specialized feature in their POS software to read CID (not to mention the effort of hooking up the POS system to the phone line). Plus, even if they do hook it up that way, if they're on a standard line and the employee answers before the second ring, they won't have any CID information since it didn't get sent before the call was connected.
I'd guess the adoption of VOIP or other digital phone line technologies in restaurants is still well below 50%.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
@loopback0 said in Caller ID:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
I said "this number will work fine," but they didn't know what number I was calling from. How does that still happen in 2021?
Not all phones have displays.
It'd be a bigger if you were calling a call centre where there's a reasonable expectation of such a thing but not a restaurant.Business phones do. Even if they're crappy old school green-and-black dot-matrix screens, business phones do have displays. And I happen to know, from previous experience at the restaurant in question, that they have a business phone at the reception desk, which I assume is where I ended up calling.
Not all businesses use business phones, even if the one in question does.
Back to the OP though telcos don't make this feature standard on business lines because the customers that actually care are still willing to pay for it. There's no incentive for the telco to make it free.
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@loopback0 said in Caller ID:
There's no incentive for the telco to make it free.
Just capitalism things.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
In that case, they're on a computer. And the computer should have the phone number of the person calling.
Coming from somebody who leads a call center helpdesk team:
- We never trust the caller ID and ask for a callback number every time someone calls, since we can't be sure the customer's calling from:
- a number they can be reached at
- a number that isn't spoofed/hidden
- a number that isn't rerouted and Caller ID isn't properly passed through
- a number that is different from one we have documented for them
- We never trust the name that shows up on the screen prompt, because users are either too lazy to enter the right employee ID when prompted or tend to fat-finger it, so the person we may be talking to may be different than the one the system says we're talking to
- We never trust the caller ID and ask for a callback number every time someone calls, since we can't be sure the customer's calling from:
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Caller ID:
Business phones do.
Varies by model. PBX systems have a range of endpoint handset options from “this is as cheap as they come” to “all the fancy options ever; also washes whiter and whistles Dixie”. Typically the ones that allow a nice separate headset are at the expensive end (I found that out when I was stuck doing a lot of telecons on the phone, and decided that upgrading to a nice headset was far too much to spend on that sort of thing).
But I'd expect a restaurant to have a phone model that at least shows caller ID.
