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Get Out of Voice Menu Pergatory
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Nov 24, 2005 02:27 PM
from the useful-bookmarks dept.
from the useful-bookmarks dept.
renx99 writes "I don't know about you, but I hate calling tech support, and the worst if the wait. Paul English felt the same way and has put together a list of shortcuts on how to get to a human quickly. If enough people bypass these phone systems, maybe the big companies will finally get a clue and start providing real customer service again..."
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IVR Guide (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, big companies will simply introduce more sophisticated system. I think people get carried away and forget who is still behind and in control of the system.
And I do believe companies do want to provide real customer service, this whole phone system thing is merely herding clueless customers to designated areas, it's not going (and unable) to answer questions anyway, you will eventually talk to a human being.
Moreover, some companies already have their own IVR guide, for example a bank here [maybank2u.com.my], this is something to be encouraged.
Re:IVR Guide (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there's a ceiling on how advanced the systems can get. If things seem to be getting completely FUBARed, there has to be a choice made on what the default is. If the input completely flies in the face of what the program is expecting, the system designer has to make a choice as to how he handles the customer. Short of a call system capable of passing a Turing test, he can either A) drop the call and say "I'm sorry, the system can't figure out what you are doing. Tough. *click*" or B) pass the call on to a human who can intelligently handle the situation. I'm willing to bet in 99% of the situations where five '0' presses result in five "I'm sorry, that's not a valid option" replies, and the sixth connects to an agent, it's the system playing it safe.
Random button smashing usually denotes a fed-up, pissed off customer, and that's the last kind of customer you want the system to simply give up on.
Parent
Re:IVR Guide (Score:5, Funny)
I hear you. I am a doctor, and I just hate talking to sick people. They always whine that something hurts, or even worse - they bleed all over you. Geez, if you want to talk to someone, just make sure that you don't have bones sticking out of you.
Parent
Re:IVR Guide (Score:3, Insightful)
Customers needing to circumvent voice systems could be costing a company more money in customer service costs than they generate in profit. A large faceless corporation peddling commodity products might be advised to let such customers take their business elsewhere.
Telus (Score:3, Interesting)
This works best when customers clearly identify themselves to the IVR on the way in. It changes dynamically however when a customer simply "pounds zero" or makes other attempts to avoid the recognition system, by making them the
Re:IVR Guide (Score:3, Insightful)
They can't get rid of customer service completely, but you know they all want to. They can, however, make it as hard as possible for you to contact them.
That's true enough. They are also making it as hard as possible to communicate if you do manage to get through to a real person. I recently went through a phone menu maze only to wind up at a dead-end and started pounding "0". Then I was connected to "Harry" who had a passing acquaintance with English. It took me several minutes to make him understan
Re:IVR Guide (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IVR Guide (Score:4, Informative)
1 - When an IVR tells you to speak your choices but doesn't say you can also punch them in, most of the times you actually can punch those in. In fact, on some IVRs what happens is that a speech block is matched and then translated into a keystroke and the program proceeds.
2 - IVR programming is mega bucks. People spend millions of dollars, analyzing call center efficiency, developing IVR applications, developing CTI routing strategies and developing desktop applications (in_house/standard CRM packages and so on and CTI enabled desktop apps).
Most IVR apps that we encounter are seemingly 2-3 level deeps menus with a good 5-6 options that we can hear. In reality, some of these applications contains thousands of IVR pages, a page being a menu choice of a voice playback that you hear. Some of these IVR applications take months to develop and months to test. It is normal for a customer to initiate a project in January and be going live with an IVR application in December. It's a lot of work.
3 - Speech recognition mostly happens today using Nuance, BBN, and Speechworks products. IBM and MS speech recognitions engines are not used for such applications. A lot of times the choice is limited depending on what IVR platform is used. Many times there are corporate standards or partnerships or loyalty to one platform and it forces all newly acquired and other owned entities to switch to the same platform. This also causes millions of dollars worth of business to call center service providers.
4 - Some business people who decide on the menu items and the layout for the IVR, actually allow barge-thru (speak while IVR is speaking or press a number). These people also allow you to zero out and hit the operator. They will even allow customers to say operator or agent anywhere and be thrown out of the IVR and into the agent queue immediately. Sometimes, they will try to convince you to pick a choice but if you insist on pressing 0 they will connect you thru.
People on the other end of the spectrum will force you to listen to everything and anything they can imagine. They will not allow zero'ing out. These people don't mind dropping the call if the customer doesn't get with the program.
There's people in the middle of this spectrum also.
Sometimes, federal/state/local law requires that certains anouncements must be played or certain conversations must be recorded or blah blah. Sometimes, it is applicable to one kind of business and not all. So it gets complicated.
Some IVRs as part of the OS, will just crash out and route you to a default queue if you keep pressing 0 like there's no tomorrow. But you may end up at the wrong queue and be put back in the correct queue.
Parent
Re:IVR Guide (Score:3, Informative)
The systems are set up though to only deal with the broadcast standard accent, which I think is the problem.
Re:IVR Guide (Score:3, Informative)
Choose now.. (Score:5, Funny)
for a poke in the eye with a sharp stick press 2
for another menu of annoying options, press 9.
Re:Choose now.. (Score:3, Funny)
Not all evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, maybe I'm the exception
Sure thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Voice menu cuts expenses. In addition, tech monkeys will probably not have to guide step by step the granny that doesn't know how to configure her outlook.
Now there are customers that will happily hang you on line for hours just so their problem be solved quickly; don't even think of telling the customer that the problem is somewhere else.
As long as terms and limits of service are established and understood by both parties, you'll get poor service and support jobs will always be underpaid.
A Rather Clean List (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A Rather Clean List (Score:4, Funny)
Cool, so all we need to do is say "fuck" in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sindhii, Tamill, Telugu and Urdu.
Parent
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
"Das, who quit the job after four months, said she learned to dislike Americans. "Rarely, there are people who are good," she said by e-mail, "but then others remind me that all they believe in is cursing, and they don't have respect for others.""
two sides to every coin my friend
Parent
Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)
My latest experience was with Comcast, which does have a U.S.-based call center, and I found the reps to be obnoxious, rude, and prone
To reach a customer support representative... (Score:5, Funny)
Pergatory? Um, yeah (Score:5, Funny)
AT&T Wireless had to be the worst ever!! (Score:3, Funny)
Everytime my bill would show up with more charges than I expected (i.e. every month) I'd call the 800 number and would have to listen to many many many minutes of a woman with a croaky "I'm so up-beat and busy I'm losing my voice" voice talk about all the really great services that AT&T Wireless had to offer, all put to some jangly disgusting up-beat "boy band" pop soundtrack.
They used the same voice and music for almost two years and I swear it nearly drove me insane.
The problem was there was no way to avoid having to listen to croaky becuase you had to listen attentively for a human to pick up the call and feebly attempt to fix the problem.
Sometimes I'd have to listen to this stuff for 20 or thirty minutes at a time.
There is a happy ending however. AT&T Wireless got bought by Cingular and the croaky voice, and music, have gone forever because all the bugs with my bill seem to have been fixed so I don't have to call anymore.
Thank you to whoever fixed my bill.
FedEx (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The worst (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The worst (Score:3, Informative)
The phone system might have been set up for software that doesn't exist anymore or is not used in all locations. I worked for a company where this happened. The phone system asked you for the phone number on the account and then I asked them for the same thing. When the compa
UK numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Rant enabled:
There is nothing I hate more than being redirected to a call centre in India or somesuch to someone who can barely understand what I say and I can barely understand what they say.
This is especially more important when i'm wanting to query a company on something complex that cannot be answered by them reading out an answer from a list of questions and answers. The moment you ask them a question that's not on their list it's headbanging against wall time as you hope to be transferred to someone in the English speaking world.
I'm not against call centres, infact curiously enough I recently got redirected to one in the USA (it may have been Canada) recently and they were able to get the answers I needed. I just hate the ones where I get redirected to a non-native English speaking country where they're reading from a script essentially.
I think the truly aggravating thing about this is that often you're on a phone line that's costing you (or the company you work for) money and the company you're calling are profiting from the call, it's actually in their best interests to get you on the line waiting longer.
Re:UK numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:UK numbers? (Score:3, Funny)
NPR story (Score:3, Informative)
KCAL 9 has a video story of this. (Score:3)
It's about getting MY way (Score:3, Funny)
It is not that bad (Score:3, Interesting)
So, such systems aren't universally bad. The only thing they need is the option to talk to a live person and any given point in the menu. That would make the customers feel secure and calm - sufficiently so that they don't necessarily use it always.
Why not call backs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not call backs? (Score:3, Insightful)
I had that happen the other day. I was calling Verizon about my malfunctioning cell phone but I was using my phone to call Verizon because it's free that way (and I couldn't find the 1-800 number). The tech guy asked for my number and he called me back after I got off my cell phone. We got disconnected, unfortunately, and that was the end of that entire tech suppor
Some times the humans suck too (Score:3, Insightful)
In a few cases, I even prefer the menu system, for straight forward queries that I just need to provide a meter reading, or get a list of transactions. Once I know the menu route, it's quicker than dealing with a human.
If my call were so important to them (Score:4, Funny)
If they cared.... (Score:3, Insightful)
To use our superfantastic automated system press one now. Otherwise, press two or stay one the line and someone will answer shortly.
And for those humans who get calls, listen to what is asked of you and respond to that, not what you want to respond to.
I hate it when I ask if X is in, only to be transferred to their extension which gets me to their voicemail which I then hang up on because I need to know if they are in.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/85937 [ourmedia.org]
Tings - a nanowrimo 2005 CC BY-SA novel in progress
The Cost of Clueless Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost of having one clueless human talk to another is enormous. The cost of having a well educated and knowledgeable employee who can directly deal with said clueless caller's problems is even higher.
In fact, let's face it, if you are a highly knowledgeable employee, doing support work is not the most desireable job in the world. Who wants to deal with whiny clueless end-user's problems all day? You would have to pay a premium salary to keep these people from moving to more interesting jobs.
Are you willing to pay (a lot) more for convenient customer support? Conversely, are you willing to talk to someone from India (or whereever), who could be more knowledgeable and more able to deal with your problems, at a lower cost, albeit with a sometimes difficult accent and/or attitude?
Another option is charging people who insist on having their problem solved immediately, and allowing others, who are willing to state their problem and wait for someone to get back to them, a less expensive service.
As a previous poster mentioned, IVR systems at least allow calls to be organized and routed to knowledgeable individuals to facilitate cost efficiency. Computers can answer and route calls far more cheaply (if the system is designed well) than people can. That's why the phone company charges you for operator assisted calls.
Product and Customer Support is expensive, especially for complex hardware and software systems. Perhaps every piece of software and hardware could come with two different prices: A higher one that entitles the user to convenient, high quality customer service, for a limited period, and another that provides a cheaper product but with a lower quality of customer service. This might serve to set the customer's expectations better than the current one-price-fits-all approach.
Define something please... (Score:3, Funny)
Darn!! (Score:4, Funny)
Not quite that easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately it is not quite that simple. I work as tech support on IVR products, and I can tell you that what this is suggesting is really just an arms race. The big companies are more than anxious to get you out of the IVR and to a real person if that's what you need. They are simply trying to avoid wasting valuable human resources as switchboard operators and dumb terminals. The problem is that, as any emerging technology, the wrinkles are still getting ironed out.
I am perfectly aware that IVRs are not new technology, but the more advanced CTI along with TTS and ASR capabilities that are growing up are making it so that it should actually be easier to get the action or info that we need more quickly. As this matures although these companies do track "0-outs" and abandons as metrics of the success of their IVR systems, they are also tracking full callflow, and they are certainly willing to listen to suggestions or even all-out complaints if they can use the data to improve service, reduce wait times (think "trunk") and more effectively use their people.
Don't just 0 out - complain!
Simpson's (Score:3, Funny)
[Bart presses randomly]
You have chosen "regicide"! If you know the name of the king or queen being assinated, press 1!
Best way: Swear at voice systems (Score:3, Interesting)
The third time I finally got too frustrated and started swearing as soon as the computer answered. The voice paused for a few seconds, then said "Ok, a representative, one moment please."
I thought it was a brilliant idea. Recognize when the customer is getting pissed off and then get him to a human ASAP.
When will we get out of spelling purgatory? (Score:3, Informative)
From a rep's perspective (Score:3, Informative)
And that is one reason I am starting to dislike "customer service". You get lots of utterly ignorant people, and the ones that can't read or write are often the ones that can't understand the spoken word. "I can't help you right now, I will have to ask my supervisor to look at your situation and call you back in the morning" Conversation should be OVER, save a few niceties. Quit arguing with me, it's just killing my stats. I can't help you, bitch/fuckwit.
So I just imagine the pain of those in their organizational silos, getting people that insisted on talking to the wrong person. It's their job performance that suffers- all the stats for incoming and outgoing calls are recorded. The more out calls, and the longer the calls, the more likely you are to get canned. Plus, I get to have a person on hold while I'm on hold with another department. WTF? Misery insists on having company to listen to elevator music.
If you're pissed off about a phone menu, don't make the reps suffer. Tell them politely, or better yet, write a letter about it. Take your business elsewhere if you hear of better service.
But for the love of #random deity# just press the buttons and be nice to the rep.
Don't press anything (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No way will this work (Score:3, Insightful)
I always genuinely need to interact with a human being. It's the company's job to know their product and mine to just use it. I am going to explain what I want in natural language and THEY can figu
Re:I don't mind them. (Score:3, Interesting)