British workers refuse to use the telephone. No wonder our economy is in the doldrums, a top city boss reveals

The budget saw a lot of talk from Chancellor Rachel Reeves about boosting growth and improving the country’s sluggish productivity, a long-standing problem.

British output per worker is lower than that of the US, France and Germany. All kinds of measures have been or will be proposed, often involving higher taxes.

I have a simpler solution. The economy would get an immediate boost if the British picked up their phones and used them for their original purpose, which was to talk to each other.

In the flood of texts, emails, social media posts and photos, people – especially young people – have forgotten why phones were invented in the first place: to make calls.

If we want to handle things quickly and make decisions, we need to talk more. Not only for the economy, but also for our mental health. We are in a loneliness epidemic.

It is made worse by factors such as working from home and companies keen to cut overhead costs, whatever the consequences. The best solution is for people to meet in person, but if this doesn’t work, the sound of a human voice would do wonders.

Most young adults wouldn’t think of making a phone call or even answering a call. If you call them, they view it as intrusive, bordering on hostility.

A quarter of 18 to 34 year olds never answer a phone; this even seems to cover FaceTime video calls. But even midlifers and baby boomers are starting to think it’s cool to eschew voice because of the various forms of text-based messaging.

A pet hate is when you call someone and he orders you not to leave a voicemail but to send him a text instead. It’s so rude to expect the caller to put in all the effort, and why? What’s so hard about listening to a voice message? Are their eardrums so fragile that they cannot withstand the attack?

Even more serious is that companies are equally averse to talking to their own customers.

This is self-harm on their part: the benefits would be significant if there were more personal chat and less texting and direct messaging on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, X/Twitter and the rest.

These platforms seem to offer immediacy and speed of contact.

Too often they are a source of delay and displacement.

When did it become normal to send an email or WhatsApp asking if it’s okay to call someone and, if so, make an appointment for this invasion of their personal space? It’s hardly like you’re proposing to smash down the front door of their house.

And now that we’ve been able to secure this privilege, why would it be necessary to send a follow-up email detailing everything you just outlined?

Perhaps there should be a Treasury model of the hours wasted drafting an email when a quick phone call could solve the problem in minutes.

Part of this aversion to improvised communication is the legacy of the pandemic lockdowns.

Working from home and calling from the office seems to be an invasion of privacy, now that social and professional contact is switching to Zoom or Teams.

These systems are extremely useful, but the design can lack spontaneity. Instead of passing on information, people with more self-confidence will often perform, underscoring their superiority. Underage personnel may be forced into embarrassed or resentful silence.

As for consumer complaints or questions, wouldn’t it be great if a company would answer the phone within a reasonable time? No chance. They want to save money by discouraging phone calls, so they try to get us to go the chatbot messaging route on their website or app.

Don’t they realize that no one calls an insurance or banking helpline for fun? If customers have issues that can be answered through the online FAQ, they will do so and not call.

But the canned answers are generated by artificial intelligence and rarely answer a real question effectively. The secret goal is to get the customer to give up, leave, and never have the nerve to bother him again.

In an unguarded moment, a banker described customers trying to talk to a real person as “misuse of the telephone.” Heaven forbid the account holders, who are the reason he receives a hefty salary and bonus, should expect any service.

The person concerned may regret this comment. But it inspired my own phone abuse.

My insurer tried to increase the premium on my home and buildings policy by 30 percent, believing that I would automatically agree to this increase that was well above inflation – which came without additional cover and was not motivated by a claim.

I called the number, rebuffed every attempt to get me to use the website and managed to get the increase down to 2 percent.

Being studiously polite helps on these occasions. Long wait times at banks and other insurance companies can cause customers to become irate and take it out on call center agents, who are poorly staffed to keep costs down so their bosses can pocket their bonuses.

By making it almost impossible to talk to someone, banks, insurers and other companies are acting as if they are doing us a favor by letting us talk to a human, rather than providing the service they should be providing.

These barriers are compounded by the difficulty of reaching someone.

Instead of improving, mobile signal appears to be getting worse: Britain’s 5G speeds rank 21 out of 25 European countries.

As the Financial Times noted earlier this year: ‘It’s less about getting 4G or 5G phone coverage, and more about whether you have G at all.’

This needs to change urgently if we want to achieve growth in the economy, or even talk to our friends and family.

London is a global city where business is business. But even in parts of the West End and the City, the mobile signal can be so poor that trying to make calls is pointless. In some rural areas of the country, things are just as bad or worse.

The mobile phone operators mention difficulties in installing cell towers.

But they are usually evasive: the mergers between operators always come with promises of more investment, but what happens is that we pay more and there is no improvement.

We urgently need better connectivity to make Britain look attractive to businesses who are keen to invest here but may be baffled by the lack of signal, even in city centres.

While writing this piece, I received about 170 emails across three different systems, several WhatsApps, a voice message (creepy, in my opinion, whoever the sender is) and a single phone call.

During that one conversation, which lasted five minutes, we exchanged some news, some (actually amazing) gossip, decided on a course of action over a paper, and set a date for breakfast. Effective, reassuring, fast. It’s good to talk. Are you listening, Rachel?