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Now you can often get so much more done talking to online chat for whatever utility or organization. I guess it's only a matter of time before you're talking to a robot there too (or is it happening already?) So have we perhaps reached "peak communication"?

At least until the direct neural implant, when we can express or receive the information we need by joining minds. But then will there be frustrating computer minds that we have to interface with?

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You think emailing or chatting your common utility will get your change order processed in a reasonable timeframe? I've got bad news for you, knowing a few people who work at local utilities, those emails you send in get to sit for months in some cases before being processed, meanwhile an order put in when you call in gets processed within days.

Many utilities just opened up the floodgates to email and other forms of customer service, without adding any staff to handle said workload, hence the severe backlog at many of these utilities. Same deal with meter readers, most utilities have stopped hiring them because within 2 to 3 years, the utility will have a new smart meter system implemented across the board, and they'd rather not fire a whole team outright. Letting the employees churn without replacing them is much less dramatic.

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