Slashdot Mirror
The Return Of The Live Human Being
Metism writes: "The voice on the other end of the phone does not tell you to 'please listen carefully,
as our menu options have changed'. E-mail inquiries do not pretend as though they
were never sent. More and more companies are finding out that people actually
want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines
that can't respond to simple things like 'Hi, how are you?' Did pseudo-intelligent
humans forget something so obvious? Companies like LivePerson
help clients from large ISPs to small libraries
communicate one-on-one with people via the web. Softroad
takes the concept of live help one step further by allowing anyone, anywhere access
to their live Internet surfers via SMS, 2-way pager, or other mobile device. There's
nothing like human ingenuity when it comes to questions more complex than 'what's
my balance?' or 'what's the weather in Miami?'. But are more companies going to
listen?"
Read this article for more info.
FP?
Of course, those same companies then blow a huge wad of money on 12 Exchange servers. Sheesh...
Carl
Vote Libertarian
Does slashdot use these psudeo-intelligent AI's or do are there real computers posting these articles?
Even if your issue is, just waiting for the voice to go on can take forever. Some companies have voice menus over a dozen layers deep... "Press one if... Press one if... Press one if..."
I remember a call to Dell, it took 5 minutes to wade through the menus, then finally I was told I needed to be transferred. The transfer didn't work, and I got disconnected, and had to wade through the voicemail system again.
A credit card company didn't even have a person to talk to, and pressing zero (a nice little trick for most VM systems to get a human) didn't do anything. There was no way to talk to a person. Very frustrating.
When I want to check things like my balances, purchase equipment, etc, I LOVE THE INTERNET. It's quick, it's easy, and I can do EXACTLY what I want, when I want.
Plus, I'm old enough to realize that most errors in those sorts of things are human errors.
.
No.
The answer is as simple as the economics of phone support. Live support technicians cost much more than automated support. Live *expert* support technicians are both expensive and impossible to hold onto. Once a support tech becomes smart enough to know what the hell he's doing, he's smart enough to find a better job. And he does. And all the training cost thrown at that tech goes down the drain as fas as the company is concerned. Automated lines can work 24/7, can handle much higher call volumes and the majority of the cost is up front. This is why I think the tech support industry is going to be the big pusher behind the development of true AI. And when that happens, everyone wins. The users, the company, the support techs who get laid off and realize that it's the best thing that ever happened to them.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
'Claire' of Sprint PCS. If I had my way, I would evicerate the servers she lives on... s l o w l y... Until she screamed in pain!
Experience tells me that the dumb phone systems are usually smarter than the person I would end up speaking to anyway.
I have cell service with SprintPCS, and God forbid that they put even so much as an email address on their account management website. When you try to find a help page, all you can locate is this stupid-@$# "Claire" which is nothing more than a seriously crippled FAQ with a stupid CGI face at the top of the page. There actually is a form that will send an email to a real person, but the link to it is buried in one of the sub-pages.
If they even had a phone number somewhere I would be happy. Just to get that, I had to fill out their form, to which the reply was... uhh... I dunno, call this number. Sheesh.
All I know is that as soon as my 1 year contract is up, I'm dumping Sprint. The service itself has been decent, but when a company avoids giving actual personal help like they do, I won't do business with them.
Do not read this sig.
can't find a place to put this, so I might as well put it here..
For a time, my top 10 list of user comments had stuff like (5,funny) behind the topic. Now, it just shows (5,). What's going on here? Anyone else having this?
I agree.
You can cuss out a machine.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to we
I'm looking forward to the eventual death of POTS and everyone using some form of IP Telephony, which will remove that problem for the most part. It would be nice if every "phone number" was either an IP address or a FQDN.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There was a discussion on the I-Sales mailing list recently about this, and the general concensus that these 'LivePerson' style systems can sometimes be quite intrusive.
Some sites have live helper systems that allow staff to automatically send messages to you as you're browsing the site, and this is rather offputting. It's the equivalent of being hassled while walking round the store.
Service, however, is important, and someone should be able to get it if they want it.. but giving your sales people more commission just to harass customers out of their money is not the way to do it.. and, I've been enjoying the service-less face-less consumer society of late, simply because I don't have to deal with awkwards sales people.
But the main question is this.. Would you rather buy from somewhere that's really cheap and get little service, or buy from an exclusive expensive outlet and get tons of service? I'd actually say the former for myself, this is why I do not shop at Gucci or Ralph Lauren.
With the recent dip in the economy, it has shown that many previously high-flying Americans feel the same, and would rather go and shop at CostCo and Target, than at Sears. Budget brands are IN, and we're not feeling too upset about it. Many Americans are finally learning you sometimes can get more for less, and budget brands are taking off.
We're witnessing the same in the airline industry. Budget flights are popular.. whereas prestigious companies are going down the pan.
So, who cares about humans? If we can get our premium products at a budget price.. we can put up with having to deal with automated support.. AS LONG AS IT WORKS. I'd rather 'help myself' than pay a premium for customer care.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Google Answers is a way to pay human "researchers" for answering all types of questions - Google gets a commission, but the answers provided, for money or not, are available and can be browsed for free.
Pessimistic or anything regarding our society, but I think a good margin of people are within a significant level of anti-social behavior such that they rather not "have" to deal with a human, and are willing to sacrafice a level of service to accomodate the want.
Many times I need to contact a company regarding an issue and many times I just dont feel like dealing with customer service (especially ISPs), so I just send an email and go back and forth with that....
But I don't walk to talk to some agency kids, I want to speak to the people who made the mistakes in the first place. Companies who hire other people to answer their phones are avoiding their customers and have something to hide, or at least give that impression.
to bitch out. NO reaction. no deal making. its a stone wall. One of the more frustrating things about phone menu systems is that they move slowly. Humans can quickly direct you to the appropiate contact or info. AI eventually will do this well, but it is definitely not up to par yet.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I don't mind a well designed interactive voice respones (IVR) system, it can be much better than some of the mouthbreathers that man customer service lines. The key here is well designed.
e r-it-was-received, only to have them complain about their computer being slow, or be difficult to understand.
If I want to know what time a flight is landing, I would much rather deal with a well designed system (IIRC continental is a good example). As I recall, it has a decent speech reco system with some natural language understanding. You can say "When does flight 541 land in baltimore" and it tells you. This can be better than waiting-for-the-next-available-representative, while being reminded that my call-is-important-and-will-be-answered-in-the-ord
Give me cold efficiency over warm incompetance any day.
On the other hand, I can't stand poorly designed IVR systems. For example, when I call my credit card company, they ask for my 16-20 digit credit card number (although the GM card only asks for the last 4 digits), and the last 4 digits of my SSN or my zip code. Then, they tell me all about my balance and recent payments (which I didn't ask for). When I finally get transferred to a live rep, the first question they ask.... "May I have your credit card number?"
The technology exists to match the data with the caller. They shouldn't have to ask for my CC# again. Stupid (or cheap) IVR programming (or purchasing) is the culprit.
On the other hand, I'm always pleasantly surprised when they get it right...
The people that you are speaking to live in Bangalore and are taught to speak "American English" so you feel a connection. THey are instructed to watch American tv, like Buffy, Friends, etc., to pick up the vernacular and interject comments like "I'm so tired....I was up watching Friends Season 1 last night....that Joey is so funny".
Remember. These are corporations. They do not care about. They do care, however, about making it appear that they care about you. Hiring foreigners to provider this service doesn't cost them much in the end run as there is high turnover which keeps costs down and it engenders customer loyalty for those not in the know.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Please say "bug," "feature," "complaint," "subscription," "denial of service," or "other." To be connected to a customer service representative, please say "GIVE ME A FUCKING HUMAN BEING NOW!!!" To hear this menu again, please say "Repeat."
sulli
RTFJ.
My platinum card does not even go through the "here is your balance" crap anymore -- connects through me to somebody directly (it's a chase platinum, btw):
AND RIGHTLY SO. I *NEVER* used the numbers on the back to check balances and all that. I got internet for it. I think there are probabbly people who uses the phone system in the other ways oftenly (press button for this, or that, or whatever) -- but if a psuedo smart phone system knows about the person's calling habits (and profile it based on the callerid or something), we'd be all happy(er).
as for the web-based IM type customer service: I am not that into it. just not the same ya know. besides seem like the dude / gal is always handling a couple people at once -- and you can tell -- so the experience is just "very inpersonal human contact". not much better than phone systems.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
More like from the additional-advertising-revenue-department. Somone must be jumping over up and down over figuring how how sell *two* companies the same story space.
What prompted this? An article? Then why isn't it linked?
-you'd like to speak to a live person. "beep"
-you have selected to speak with a live person, there are no representives to take your call at this time, please wait on the line or use are prompt to guide you through the system.
-Domo Arigato Mr. Robot starts to play to sooth your anger.
although there's some question as to whether it should be moderated "funny" or "insightful"
I can remember in the film Demolition Man, one of the SAPD officers answered the phone saying comething like:
Welcome to the SAPD, if you would like to be put through to an automatic computer answering service, please say so now...
Although I bet both the officer and the answering service would pick up any swearing - should the caller be on the toilet and the sea shells aren't working.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Consistency? Low commute times? What does this have to do with anything? Gravity pulls things down, and it always has. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line. In this universe, the most convenient solution, floating to your destination, is often the least probable because of physical laws.
Of course, the same universe then turns out to contain things like quantum entaglement and possibly superstrings. Sheesh...
Slow Down Cowboy!
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fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Interesting in that the focus is on the return to human interactivity, but they're looking at other ways, such as Internet and SMS to mediate that human contact. Is "talking" to a human via SMS any better than "talking" to a machine?
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
w00t first post biatches!
I don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be that a lot of the customer service reps for various airlines were actually prisoners, making very little, and costing very little money.
I imagine a phone encounter with a whiny-ass customer going something like this:
"whine, whine, whine, I hate you, you representative of company X!"
"Oh, you got problems? I just got fucked up the ass by a guard! Go screw yourself. Oh, Thank You for calling Company X, Goodbye!"
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Humans generate detectable levels of radiation and contribute to global warming. They carry disease and are responsible for thousands of deaths every year.
Perhaps automated phone menus are an attempt at being socially responsible.
"Thank you for calling. Your call is important to us. Your call is so important to us that we don't want to use it up all at once. Instead we're going to savor the anticipation for hours while you wait on hold"
(At the risk of being arrested and taken to a home for the criminally obvious, the above is meant humorously).
way off topic, i know:
My old answering machine message was, in a monotone: "To leave a message, speak after the tone. To hear a tone, press the number 2. For a list of the ways in which technology has failed to improve our lives, press 3." <beep>
FreeBSD for the impatient.
I like IRC-style chat with customer service reps. Even if the convo plays in slow mo because they're handling more than one person, it's still nice to be able to do other stuff while I'm waiting. Plus, I can save the log for future reference.
I'd settle for that type of Customer Service on most things. It'd be an interesting economic model because it'd just require computers and a net connection to handle lots and lots of people.
"Derp de derp."
It's a sad fact that in the long run, an automated service is cheaper and more cost effective to run and maintain than having live employees. Machines don't interact with office politics, don't want raises and shorter hours, and don't want vacations.
Same goes with e-mail over 'live' help: if you have people sitting around all day waiting for a support question to come in, the company is spending 'unneeded money' because the person is seemingly useless unless something happens. With e-mail support, a company can have a person sit down for an hour or two to answer them all and then be off the pay clock for the rest of the time they aren't answering questions.
This is, quite unfortunately, the way things are headed.
I for one NEVER return any calls that are left by automated machine. also - if I ever get any calls with "please hold for the next available representative" etc... I just hang up. and never call them back when requested.
I was out of work for almost two years in this recent economic slump - and I have some bad credit now... not too much - only about 3500... but since I was making NO income, I could not pay some bills. Now that I am working again - I am trying to get caught up...
even though they are calls from creditors - my philosophy is: If they cant take the time to have a real person call me - I will not pay them, or call them until they do.
I dont care about credit ratings - I maintain average credit, but for the most aprt I buy *everything* cash only. The only reason why I used the card I had was due to not working for 1.75 years and running out of my savings. I have bought my last three cars in full with cash payments, which does not go down on your credit BTW...
Any company that uses automated customer services does not deserve me as a customer. I am actually thinking about starting a coalition that gets members to join just so we can petition companies into realizzing that excellent customer service (with real live people) directly effects the bottom line. and that shitty automated services just drives frustrated customers away.
sadly though - I think it would be a losing battle as coporations could give a shit about real live human customers.
reality corrupt!
reboot universe?
|no:?
If more people would be put in Abuse desk positons, trained and given the ability to shut down spammers, and then reply back with some true humor... ...then everyone wouldn't be complaining about how bad spam is getting and how all we're getting is responces from Dave Null.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Evidence:
This looks like an example of stealth marketing. It's the latest thing for marketing scum. Check out this article in Time Magazine.
Marketing bitches...
Unfortunately for companies where the accountants are in charge of all hiring, including tech supprt, switching from automation to live human beings will result in a significant *decrease* in the quality of service.
-- Stamp out entropy. ->dryguy@bellsloth.net
We can only wish.
On paper, the economics work. People are expensive. There are lots of straightforward nuts-and-bolts questions that computers can handle, simply, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
Unfortunately, most companies let computers do all the stuff, whether they are suited to it or not, and lay off all the people. Or (sometimes worse!) farm the support out to a call centre who don't have a clue.
If my call was that important you would have answered it by now!
...laura
"Thank you for calling the San Angeles Police Department, would you like to talk to a computer?"
After talking to Gateway technical support one day, I found this particular part of the movie rather amusing.
"Derp de derp."
I read an article in a local paper about how a lot of outsourcing is done to India. Apparently, there are a few companies who specialize in phone support for Western companies.
There are a few reasons for this:
More power to them, but the article brought up an interesting point. These companies make it a point to try to make the person calling support believe they are speaking to someone in the US. They will do things like show episodes of "Friends" or highlights from a football game to their staff to familiarize them with pop culture. The support folks come up with more Americanized names. This aspect of the service bothered me, but I could understand their rationale. For these same reasons, some of the people interviewed in the article said it was against company policy to give out client names, but they claimed that they had very large clients.
Just want to share info (and hope this post doesn't bring out any xenophobia).
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Slow Down Cowboy!
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When I get an error message like that, it only takes me a few seconds to skim it and get the information I need (usually, I'm done after "Slow down Cowboy!").
If you have a competer generated voice read it to me over the phone, it will take 115 words/60 wpm = just under two minutes for me to get the same amount of useful information. Most of that time will be used up being forced to listen to irrelevant info. My annoyance at that will carry over and make me annoyed at the grating tone of the CG voice as well.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
what is this crap? we all know telephone to computer interfaces aren't very good. humans are better. yep. glad you got that across.
i can't help but think slashdot just (accidently?) posted another ad, this time for Earthlink, LivePerson or Softroad.
fear is the mind killer
How is this really different from outsourced call centers? The critical issue is handling customer problsmokepingiccems. If you provide "live" humans which can only respond to a "script" of answers, you're wasting money. If your company actually responds and solves my problem I don't care if its voicemail, e-mail, or a live person. I do care if I have to be bounced between phone reps, or voice systems without getting any results.
You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
Yes
I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
Ye-es
I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
Yeeeeeesssss.
I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
Yeah.
I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
YYY-EEE-SSS!
I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.
Fuck you!
Thank you. Your tickets for 8:15pm tonight can be collected from the kiosk. Have a nice day.
-- SIGFPE
Last year we bought a VoE phone system. Its got all kinds of cool features that a computer can do but the old key systems couldn't. One major problem is that the thing can not cope with the concept of a receptionist. It appears that who ever designed the thing just didn't ever consider that one person would need to be able to answer a call, talk to the person and then put them on hold where where they sit in a que for what ever extention they wanted. It also couldn't even generate a busy singal until a few montsh ago. In a country where every connected call costs real money, the busy signal can be your friend. We have even had clients tell us they won't deal with us any more if they get voice mail.
Here's an article from the Chicago Tribune back in June about companies who are using call centers in India. Instead of some obnoxious, apathetic criminal-justice major from the local community college, you get a polite, knowledgeable Indian with a master's degree.
Dee in Denver, or Deepali in Delhi?
India is a leader in `remote outsourcing,' in which customer-service calls are answered overseas. The industry's U.S. clients save money, but they don't want their customers to know that they aren't.
By Liz Sly
Tribune foreign correspondent
June 23, 2002
NEW DELHI -- It is 5 p.m. and, in an air-conditioned office complex on the city's outskirts, several dozen of the brightest and best of India's educated young elite are gearing up for a long night of what in the industry is known as "remote outsourcing."
On the other side of the globe, America is just waking up. Soon, this building is buzzing with the sound of nearly 3,000 people, some dressed in jeans, others in saris, talking to people in Chicago, New York, Cleveland or Memphis about their computer problems, credit card bills and Internet accounts.
What most of the Americans dialing their toll-free numbers don't realize is that the person called Bradley or Sophia who is helping them on the other end of the line is really an Indian named Sanchoy or Deepali speaking from halfway across the world.
That's the whole point of Spectramind, one of the first and most sophisticated of the homegrown call centers that have sprung up across India in the past two years, setting a trend that is expected to lure billions of dollars of business in the years ahead.
Raman Roy, Spectramind's founder and chief executive, denies that any deception is involved. His representatives don't lie, he said.
But they don't exactly tell the truth, either. The agents give themselves American names. If customers ask representatives where they are located, they respond that they are not allowed to disclose their location for security reasons.
Everything about this industry is highly sensitive. Roy declines to disclose the names of his 15 business clients, except to say that the vast majority of them are American and most are in the Fortune 500. It is written into their contracts that he not identify them, and he invites visitors to the building only on the condition that they not reveal the corporate identities.
He cites reasons of competitiveness; just as likely, the big names whose logos adorn the walls of Spectramind don't want their customers to know that they are talking to Indians in India.
"It's still a new thing," Roy acknowledged. "Most Americans haven't woken up to it yet."
No expense has been spared to sustain the illusion that this could be Dallas or Detroit, not Delhi. Outside, a dust storm presages the imminent arrival of the monsoon season, the mercury hovers at a scorching 112 degrees and the occasional cow wanders by.
Inside Spectramind's climate-controlled offices, decorated in soothing pastel shades, this could be the corporate headquarters of any trendy new American start-up. Clocks on the wall show the time in Chicago and New York. Tennessee Titans and Atlanta Falcons pennants flutter over cubicles.
New recruits watch reruns of "Friends" over and over until they can talk exactly like Chandler, Monica or Phoebe. They learn the rules of American baseball and the names of American football stars.
"We have to be sure that if a customer from Chicago wants to chat about last night's Bears game, our representative can say something intelligent," said Roy.
People who have never seen a snowflake in their lives are shown pictures of American cities in winter and are required to familiarize themselves with that day's weather in Chicago or Denver before starting work. They are schooled in the U.S. system of government and in the eating habits of Americans.
Roy helped pioneer the trend nearly a decade ago when, as a longtime employee of American Express in India, he helped set up the first customer call service in India. Other multinationals already in India quickly followed, including GE and British Airways.
Then Roy hit on the idea of providing call-center services to U.S. companies with no existing presence in India, and two years ago, Spectramind was born.
Industry employs thousands
For India, it is a booming industry that employs about 110,000 and generates around $1.5 billion in annual revenue. By 2008, the industry is expected to have grown tenfold, with India commanding around 4 percent of the global outsourcing market, according to the consultancy McKinsey & Co.
India faces competition from the Philippines and Ireland. But it is Indians themselves who give India the edge. No other country offers such a vast pool of English-speaking, well-educated talent at such low cost.
Most college graduates in the U.S. would turn up their noses at a job answering customer queries over the phone. In India, which produces 2 million to 3 million college graduates a year and nowhere near enough jobs to employ them all, a career at Spectramind is highly sought-after.
For every job advertised, there are around 400 applicants. A college degree is required. Many employees have postgraduate qualifications. They earn around $3,000 to $4,000 a year, or around 20 percent of the salary paid to an American for the same work. Higher telecommunications costs eat into some of the savings, but overall an American company using Spectramind's services will cut costs by 50 percent, Roy said.
"For a lower price we're giving better quality work from better qualified people," said Roy.
Few customers guess truth
Rarely is the illusion detected. Occasionally, a customer will have read a newspaper story about the growth of the industry in India and ask. But otherwise, they never guess, said Deepali Sharma, a.k.a. Sophia, a bright 23-year-old with a master's degree in business management.
"Some people have asked me if I'm from Spain or Australia," she said, "but never India."
The only problem comes when callers, so impressed with the friendliness and service of their representative, ask for dates: Sophia has been asked out to lunch three times since she started work in February.
"I always just tell them, this is a professional conversation, so please let's just talk about business," she purrs, slipping into the flawless American accent she perfected over 12 weeks of rigorous training.
"Then they shut up."
Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune
Everything that's old is new again? This is news.
... Grrr!" Valenti of the MPAA are doomed. Their doomed because people are realizing that retro is okay. It's not bad. It may not be new and shiny and chromey and expensive, but it's cool and gets the job done and works fine when it's late on a Satuday night and you need to put something on the stereo with the boring old two Bose speakers because you've got that someone special sitting on the edge of your bed, looking at your lips and getting ready to give you a smooch that could, conceiably, change your life.
Cripes. I've been saying this for years.
Take the RIAA. The thing that's gonna kill the RIAA -- and put it to rest for good -- isn't going to be digital. It's going to be retro-tech: today's "old" CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes. People will rediscover this stuff -- the stuff that we look upon as "retro" -- and realize, look, this is all we need. This is what we want.
Microsoft's HomeTheaterPC will be proof-of-concept here. Of *course* it will fail. It will fail because (a) it's too expensive, (b) it's too restrictive, and (c) Gates was right when he said people don't want to watch TV on their computers. But that's not all: it will fail because it's overkill. All you really need is, um, an old television set and a VCR. That'll work. And maybe a cheapo DVD player to play films. College students, for example. What college student is gonna spend $1500 on a box like that? No one. Especially not when most folks realize that "retro"-tech -- the boring old VCR, the cheapo DVD -- is good enough.
Ditto for this "speak to a live representative" stuff. No one wants to interact with stupid phone trees. No one ever did, in fact, but companies figured they could get an even *bigger* profit in the boom-90s if they fired their phone reps and gave the bored 20-something dot-commers (comers? cummers?) something to do.
Now that the bored dot-coms are realizing that, yeah, they really do need to finish out those four years of college and that, well, four years of college is not so bad when you -- and most anyone else -- can pretty much laze on the green grass in the quad in front of the library and play hacky-sack and beat bongos and eat falafils and make bead necklaces and read Tacitus and Schopenhauer and get decent enough grades without a lot of pressure and get laid and smooch and suck and spend Sunday afternoon sleeping hard in a pretty comfortable bed in a pretty decent dorm with a not-too-shabby OC3 on a Big-10 American campus is, well, not a bad way to spend four years. I did it, and I'd wager most folks here did it -- and, for the most part, enjoyed it.
Why rush through the four or five or five and half years and get to -- what? -- the place where that guy on Startup.com got to and then realized that just as he could sit back and enjoy it and brag about how he rode his dirt bike down the aisle at the annual Starbucks shareholder convention and pretend like he was really changing the world -- why rush through it all and get to this -- riding a dumb bike down a red carpeted aisle in an auditorium filled with suits -- when you can pretty much sit back and coast and actually spend four or five years that are undeniably low-key, filled with booze and guilt-free sex and, for the most part, pretty damn enjoyable?
It is because of this -- these reasons and others -- that the RIAA and Jack "Maddog
Or at least your weekend.
I (sortof) spoke with AT&T "customer service" the other day to cancel my long distance service... even worse than the typical computerized phone menu... they've implemented a so-called "smart" computerized menu system with voice recognition, and the interface being a pseudo-personality.
The effect was much worse than before... now I had NO buttons to push, and a "person" on the other end that didn't understand a single word I said!!!
lame
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
"If you sons-of-bitches wanna bloody well talk to me about some stupid offer you have you can call me yourself and sit on hold for 15 minutes while I watch the REST OF THE SHOW I WAS WATCHING THAT I BLOODY MISSED BECAUSE YOU FUCKING NUMPTYS CALLED ME AND PUT ME ON HOLD!! FACK OFF!!" I was quite satisfied. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
If I were designing an IVR I would make sure that the zero key goes to a (very VERY long) recording saying: "not so fast cowboy"....
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We dropped our automatic phone attendant years ago. Those who are viewing this post with a colored dot next to my name know that I work for a doctor's office.
Ignoring all of the claptrap, we have three problems. First, old people. Second, dumb people. Third, poor people.
The first two have great difficulty in getting in touch via the menus. The last category still has rotary phones (I'm not sure if my grandfather who died in '93 ever had a touch tone phone. Just not available in that part of the county.) And these are the people who NEED to get through. The old person wants to know what the shooting pain in their left arm is, the dumb people want to know if it's bad that the festering wound from stepping on a nail three weeks ago is bad, and the poor people are usually only calling because that festering wound is causing their foot to fall off.
Then there is the other side of the coin: young, smart, rich. They WANT service. They don't want to deal with voice answering system hell. Basically, in my industry, nobody likes it.
So we ditched it. At the time, everyone was happy.
Problem is, like others have mentioned, human beings are expensive and error-prone in their own ways. Even with 15 phone lines (in a four doctor office) we still have times when all lines are 'lit' for hours. People complain about this. But when we mention the alternative (computer answerer) they quickly say that the wait wasn't too bad. (BTW, it's set up so that if no incoming lines are available, the pt. is told to call answering service. The answering service gets through 90% of the time. Other 10%, and they go straight to cell phone)
So my only question is: why did it take so freaking long for others to figure it out? Remember those 15 voice lines? Double that. That's how many lines we have in the various locations. I dropped our ILEC for a CLEC because I got tired of waiting on the stupid computer (that and getting 30 bills per month instead of one).
Business school story: Guy from a corporation in Baltimore came to speak to the class (marketing?) and said that these computer answering devices were the worst thing ever invented (this was '96-'97, BTW). He used to love 'em. But one day, he was at lunch with a colleague/customer. Customer complained about how long it took to get through the menu. Speaker said "What are you talking about? I just dial the direct number and..." Customer interupted "Here's my cell phone. Call the main number and try to get to your secretary". After ten minutes, the speaker finally got through. Instead of checking on messages, he told secretary "get some people together to ditch the phone system. The meeting will be in 30 minutes, as soon as I get back from lunch."
Well, duh!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Tech support: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Customer: What? My name is John. Not Dave.
Tech support: I think you know that your name is Dave just as much as I do.
Customer: Whatever, how do I fix my router?
Tech support: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
Its about the bottom line. Most people will go through any lengths of voice mail maze before they ask for a real person. If they do that, thats one less low level job they have to fill. To date I have found no voice mail system that doesn't hand you to a real person if you just sit quite long enough or simply try the 0 key, which they often neglect to tell you is an option.
That being said, companies phone systems are now being designed around requiring automated services be used. With voice recognition working for numbers, they can service those without touch tone phones. Soon there will be no need for anything but voicemail hell.
Sometimes I think Wallstreet is taking lessons from the DMV.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
back at linuxville they barely make enough money to keep themselves a float. and have to find ever intriguing reasons to add yet more cost to that 'pro' (note > includes nmap - others don't) version of the same shit, different day .. er linux.
Microsoft at least has the decency to remove all essences of pure progoganda and slavery, and NOT lie point blank to it's customers. You think MS is bad ? at least they can code.
Many companies make the mistake of thinking that their phone-bank/support-hotline/etc... is a separate division of the company, responsible for raising its own revenue.
Talk to any accountant. They'll tell you that this is the most efficient way to break down a company to save money. When you break a successful company down where customer service is it's own department, phone services appear as if they are not generating any revenue, and are therefore cut, outsourced, or otherwise done away with, usually to the detriment of the company because their customers need real help, real service, and real support, not an automated answering system that doesn't really help them.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I volunteer in a call referral center for my church. The church runs TV advertisements for free Bibles and videos, and people call in to get request a delivery.
We get lots of people who were trying to call DirectTV, but they misdialed the number and got us instead. Many times, even after we go through the introduction, "Hello. I'm Joe Smith. Thank you for calling for your free Bible for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..." people still don't realize that we aren't DirectTV, and they proceed all the way through giving us their names and home addresses until we get to the part where we ask about where they heard about the offer. Then they exclaim, "Free Bible? What?! I want my DirectTV fixed!!"
It's like they fuzz out on many levels here. First of all, they don't listen to our introduction at all, and then they don't think there's anything out of the ordinary about the fact that they got a live human being the instant they called.
It's too bad that most of them wind up not wanting a free Bible anyway :-)
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things
And how many millions were spent on research to find this out?
I bet they did that survey using a telemarking machine even:
"Press 1 if you prefer phone menus over people, press 2 if you prefer people, and press 3 if you don't care which".
In addition to the Nobel prize, there should also be a No Bell prize for people and orgs that totally miss the big clue train.
Being a geek, I tend to avoid people, yet often when I want to a non-FAQ-type question I don't want to diddle with long-path phone menus, I would rather talk with a real human who can search their grey index for answers faster.
I suspect that some PHB's suspected it, but did not want to fork over the bucks to man the phones with warm bodies.
Table-ized A.I.
I've written Voicestream's Customer Care complaining about various aspects of their service. Recently, I sent them a letter complaining that: GPRS is way too expensive; only in the US do we get billed for incoming SMS messages. An actual HUMAN BEING responded to my email, and sent me a note explaining their SMS and GPRS pricing schedules, which of course has nothing to do with what I was complaining about. The humans in these call centers are often doing the same thing a computerized system does: responding to keywords, and ignoring the rest of your problem.
I use to work for a call center. When I was assigned to "message taking" duty (overflow). I would hit the tone and pace of the "message" I had to deliver before taking down the info, in order for someone to call you back, in such a way that people would think they were talking to an automated system. Fooled quite a few people.
(* Humans cost a lot more $$ than a phone system. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line. *)
I think what may eventually start happening is that customers who pay a premium (a "gold" member) will get a real person who acts like they care, but the rest will still get bounced around in the phone-menu maze.
I read a biz rag article about a year ago which suggests that costomer pattern tracking is being used to flag the big spenders, and they are given extra service/care.
And don't pin this just on capitalism. In socialistic countries, bribes and favoritism are pretty much the same thing in disquise. A friend from Greece told me of the rampant bribocracy there. On paper, everybody gets the same treatment. However, reality usually pisses on the paper. If you don't bribe or "give favors", something as simple as a car registration may take several years.
Table-ized A.I.
/me shakes his head. Did no one think to ask Google?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Amen...I've dealt with a couple of companies that will have a computer call me, then either ask me to hold the line, or call them back (one of them didn't even include a toll-free number). I usually hold or return the call, then immediately ask to speak to a manager. When the manager answers, before he has a chance to state his business, I inform them that if they want to talk to me, they can have a human--not a computer--call me, and they will not put me on hold--they want to talk to me, not vice versa. I then inform him that I'm going to hang up, and wait by the phone for five minutes (my phone is right next to my couch and my beer fridge), and that if they want to talk to me, they should call me back immediately. Then I hang up. So far, none of them has wanted to talk to me very badly. Guess it wasn't that important after all.
I am considering rigging up a wardialer for the toll-free numbers, though...
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Is there such a thing ?
This paid my last vacation, it mi
For those of us not in the states, could you please provide some mor details on what this system does?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Lets not forget the company I work for, Cyracle, which provides what LivePerson does but better and cheaper :)
</shameless plug>
--
A friend in the U.S. has shown me his well polished dialog for breaking down unwanted spamcallers, mostly those calls around supper time. He gets so many, its down to an art form at this point. When he sees a caller-ID number he doesn't recognize, he just doesn't say hello, he launches directly into his tirade.
He's recorded a few of his best pieces, where the poor women on the other end of the line are in tears thinking they are going to prison or are not going to be paid by the marketeers. His deep alpha male command voice means most people just cave in within a few seconds, but he's surprised by the number who try to stick to the script for a short while.
It goes a little something like this:
Him> "FBI terrorism strike force hot-line. Do not hang up on this call, it has already been traced. If you hang up against my orders, you WILL be prosecuted on felony charges!"
Caller> "Ummm, We've noticed that your account is, ummm, well, ummmm, wait, is this really the FBI?"
Him> "Do you realize how much trouble you could be in for dialing this number? We here at the FBI have exactly ZERO sense of humor for illegal calls into the federal phone system."
Spammer> "Ummmm, well, its a computer that dials the numbers, we're just supposed to read this script on the screen. I didn't mean to dial your number."
Him> "Please state for the record your name, your current location, and the name of the company you are currently working for. If we cannot verify any of this information as being 100% truthfully accurate, you face federal felony charges of lying to a federal agent. The minimum sentence for that charge alone is one year in federal prison"
Usually he gets all kinds of information out of the poor telemarketer idiot from that point on. Most of them are in places like florida or oklahoma where there is high unemployment and lots of ignorant people who will do any job.
Despite this, he thinks his number hasn't been put on anywhere near enough telespammer blacklists. But he's working on it.
There are also some great tapes made by the call-centre training companies to show how abusive some called people can get. Lots of full-on screaming, cursing and threatening psychos get caught on the quality control tapes. Unscrupulous cold call centres in Britain (which is all of them) have a procedure to deal with these psychos. Their is a button on the console to trigger an alternate script for complete psychos, where they then give the name of a competitor. BT's call centre will say "Sorry sir, Vodaphone wishes you a pleasant day" before hanging up.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Start a web site for your coalition. I'll sign up.
As more and more companies compete for business, customer service is getting more important. As a sysadmin for a major midwestern university, I recently attempted to purchase a new Dell server. I tried for three weeks to get in touch with our assigned representative (remember, higher education = multimillion dollar contracts--we're not talking about some poor end-user with a $600 PC here), with no success. Her voicemail message suggested I e-mail her, but I had several questions to ask, some of which depended on the answers to other questions; besides, I'm the customer, damnit, and if I want to talk to a rep before I make a purchase, I'm damn well going to talk to a rep. Since my rep wouldn't call me back, I tried the main Higher Education line (again, remember higher ed = big contracts). I waited on hold for about 15 minutes before I said "this is bullshit, when somebody answers, I'm going to tell them off, and have them call me back after lunch." An hour later (75 minutes total), I was still on hold, and just said "fuck it." I called Gateway, had answers, and a quote by FAX, in eight minutes. Gateway will get the order, as soon as the request goes through channels. I would have preferred Dell (I think their quality is a little better), but if I have to go through that much to get them to take my money, what will I have to do to get support?
The kicker: when the Gateway server comes in, I'm going to take a picture of myself with that wonderful cow-spotted box. Going to send a copy of it to Dell, along with a letter:
With any luck, somebody will lose his job over it; this sort of situation is bullshit.
Incidentally, the really cool part is that I got more computer for less money by going Gateway over Dell. Even got SCSI drives instead of IDE. Sorry Dell--your loss. Try a little "customer service" next time.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
For those of you who don't have the joys of a Sprint PCS phone, their customer support is now a fake human intelligence. Instead of 1,2,3 options, you are now prompted to "say" what you want, like "How many minutes do I have left?". Unfortunately for me, they didn't have "I want to cancel my service", but it does respond to "I want to talk to a human" if you speak in a clear, firm, annoyed voice.
A monopoly will charge more for their monopolised good than a typical corporation would in a competitive situation, unless by holding a monopoly they can achieve a cost reduction that wouldn't be possible otherwise (a not completely unreasonable circumstance). However, a monopoly does not necessarily imply that the total cost of ownership of a product will be greater than that of a comparable product in a competitive situation, since the monopoly overhead is only a factor in the initial sale cost (the long term/total of ownership of a system is also heavily influenced by maintenance and training costs). The practical application of a monopoly can also lead to other cost reductions beyond the initial sale cost (although this obviously depends on the product in question). You don't appear to know the difference between short run and long run.
Oh yeah, and Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in e-mail servers either. Whoops?
I have no clue how much an exchange server costs in the long run, but apparently you don't either. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's pseudo-economics.
Big deal!
I'd like to see the return of the _dead_ human being.
*That* would be news!
OTOH, if you just want to talk to a dead person, no problem, there's already a company who does just this, for a fee.
They're working on a complementary service, though, designed to allow dead folks to respond.
Cya.
TO ALL SLASHDOT USERS: THIS IS STEALTH MARKETING BULLSHIT
Slashdot will be a much less interesting place if stealth marketers interested in promoting their clients are allowed to post non-newsworthy puff pieces to this site.
As a counterstrategy (in the interest of ridding these pigs from our midst) we should begin an immediate program of badmouthing whoever they promote.
So here goes --
LivePerson is an example of dot-com era corporate bloat. Rob LoCascio, their semi-intelligent CEO, developed what can best be described as a "chat applet" and with that "cutting edge" technology, as well as a little truth-stretching, managed to IPO his company.
The stockprice is currently in the shitter where it belongs. If you want a chat applet on your site, avail yourself of the many cheaper, better-coded, gnu public licensed products that aren't relics of an era better forgotten.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I've seen a lot of companies going back to live people on the phone - and most of them have nothing more than a trouble call flowchart and the same information you can find on the website. At least when I send an email a responsive company will let me know ONCE that they've received it and then AGAIN when it gets to the appropriate person.
Nothing like calling with an unusual problem and getting a HS student (sorry to present company in this category) in some outsourced call center who doesn't understand the problem and can't escalate the call until s/he has checked off all the little boxes on their form.
Too bad this will get buried in the noise because I got here too late, but....
We have a new InterTel (can I say that?) voicemail system. We spent weeks designing the menus. And the end result is that no matter what buttons you punch, every fscking call eventually ends up getting answered by one girl at the front counter. I don't care if you called our company and punched in your SSN and your mother's birthday in Morse code, your call is going to the same place as the callers who immediately press "0" for Operator.
Fscking incredible waste of money....
Exercise: Call TellMe (800-555-TELL). Try to buy movie tickets. How long did it take you? Now search Google for TellMe and read about their layoffs and cutbacks.
Extra credit: Call TellMe and say "Driving Directions". Get directions to someplace. Enjoy the "one ad per turn" business model.
And TellMe has a good technology, way ahead of the usual "press 3 for ..." crap. Most phone systems are far, far worse.
After about 8 months of consistently asking to be put on do-not-call lists, all telemarking calls to my home number stopped. (I also registered with the Direct Mail Marketing Association's telephone preference service, which may have helped.)
Some states have do not call lists (here's a list). While it can be fun to mess with telemarketers, I prefer to be left alone.
Welcome to LivePerson! An online representative will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with 'Matt'
Matt: Hi, how may I help you?
Arserolfer: Who is LivePerson's stealth marketing company? And who was the jackass up at LivePerson who thought that posting blatently obvious advertising content to Slashdot.org was a good idea?
Matt: This is LivePerson.com . Which site are you looking for?
Arserolfer: I'm looking for LivePerson.com -- I'm trying to track down the individuals who are posting illegitimate advertising content to sites like Slashdot.org in an effort to promote LivePerson. Who is your PR company?
Matt: Regarding that please email PR@liveperson.com
Arserolfer: Actually, since your PR folks seem to be fine communicating with the general public by using online publication sites illegetimately, I think I'll respond to your PR folks the same way by badmouthing them through those channels. Your company is basically selling chat applets under another name. Stealth marketing is not going to help get your stock price out of the shitter. But it will piss of the development community.
Matt: Is there anything else I can do?
Arserolfer: Why yes Matt. You can take your fist and you can ram it up your arse.
Matt: Thank you for chatting with us. If you'd like a transcript of this chat sent to you by email, please fill in the Exit survey after this chat.
Thank you for using LivePerson Live Chat! If you'd like a transcript of this chat sent to you by email, please fill in the Exit survey after closing this chat window.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The 411 people seem to have a good hybrid solution to this problem. You call up and a computer asks you to name the city you want, and the listing. They can queue that info, and as soon as a human is ready to help you, they can hear your request (probably with dead space removed, eliminating your stammering) and their voice recognition expert system has prompted them with some likely choices. If there is any question (eg you ask for "McDonalds" in "New York") they can ask for an address or other details. When you and the operator agree on a listing, a computer is ready to read it to you as many times as you like (or "dial it for an additional fee"). This might be hell for the operators, but I bet they can clear 3-4x the volume of information inquiries than they could if they did the computerized parts.
A quicker way is to simply repeat no. It's easy, takes neither quick thinking nor preparation, and their scripts really can't deal with it.
Telemarketer: Hello, I am with X and I was wondering
Me: No, I'm not interested. Thank you.
Telemarketer: May I ask wh...
Me: No.
Telemarketer: But we cou...
Me: No.
Telemarketer: Thank you, have a good day.
Me: Thank you. Good bye.
Or you could do what a friend of mine does and ask them what they're wearing, and if they'd take it off for you, etc.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Let's say I'm the tech and you're the customer. The boxes aid both of us in two ways: First, so that we're sure that you've covered all your bases on your end. Second, so that I don't waste the time of the techs one level above me by trying to outguess the simple bullshit that is at the root of most problems.
To use an example from an ISP, if someone's web browser isn't working, it's extremely likely that they didn't remember to dial up to their ISP first. Not asking whether that is so is either being plain sloppy or too smart for your own good. What would you think if you waited 45 minutes for the phone tech to walk a person through checking IP configuration and registry settings and what have you when they just jogged the phone wire in the back, and didn't check that because the tech thought his kung fu was superior?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Unfortunately, various biotech companies would have it another way- if there's anything interesting in me, they'd like it to belong to them.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
YOU BASTARD!
even though im as white as paper, THAT WAS MY LINK!
bastard.
Actually, several companies are already using alicebot for certain online customer service issues. (see www.alicebot.org for more information). It's Free (i.e. GPL), you don't have to pay it a wage, just keep her hardware running, she can do more work than a single person, and besides, if you ask her, "Hi, How are you?" she will respond with something appropriate ;)
;)
Closest thing to a live human being without the cost
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I get a -lot- of voice mail spam from vendors at my job, and recently we fell behind in our cable ISP service (providing a distant building with VPN and internet services 'til we finish running a conduit).
I get back from lunch the other day and find that among my regular voicemail spam (users needing connectivity, fires in server closets, IRS, etc.) someone named Dan Tma'bakchatal (a phonetic spelling to be sure, one has to wonder if his -real- first name was Dan) called and simply left his name and phone number.
Now normally I get all kinds of spam from vendors each week, usually someone pretending to be my friend ("Hey buddy, I heard you needed some more of those 100b switches, well, GOOD NEWS! Seems France's switched over to smoke signals and has nearly thirty thousand 100 port fiber switches, in almost new condition, ready to pick up, how many can I put you down for...?) but this time, -soley- because his name was so strange, I decided to call him.
As it turns our we were behind with our cable charge by about $600 (we -thought- we'd be cancelling sooner, but alas...) so it was actually good he called).
I can't help wonder how long government and private bill collectors can reasonably expect call backs (or emailbacks) on intrusive anonymous robotic calls...
"Hello Mr. X, please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx""
When does "I never respond to automated messages" become a reasonable answer...?
-dameron
I work in a Sprint PCS call center. If you dial 888-211-4727 you get this automated voice system called Claire. Many customers absolutely hate her. They want to talk to a live person. Unless you know the magic words you won't get to talk to a live person until she asks you a couple of questions and then when you do get a live person it's the lowly customer service rep who has no clue about technical issues and loves to misdirect your call to the wrong technical support department.
The worst thing is people might get transferred 8 or 9 times, and every time we have to ask them their phone number and name. You can imagine how pissed they can get? I do whatI can for them but if I can't fix their problem there isn't much esle I can do. The nerve of some customers, actually expecting us to be able to help them. How unreasonable can you get?
As for Visions that has to be the stupidest name for 3G I've ever heard. Technically it's 2.5G.
Our company succeeds in a tough industry where others fail miserably by consistently providing great service. No hold times, emails are answered in 5 minutes or less. Tickets solved in 10 or at least responded to. Live customer service and we've been looking at Live Person for a while. Customer service is the key.. Then again we also run linux for a large part of our operation and have openoffice deployed widely, and we're no small entity. We're all about the bottom line, but our management doesn't have their heads stuck up their asses, and they trust my boss and I to make proper beneficial decisions as we have for years. Although it's off topic, I have shown several (3) office users open office.. and they switched. Two had a legal copy of MS office! They simply liked OOo better! Kudos
Adv: This company is cool.
Agent Smith may be an extreme misanthrope, but in this case, his expression applies pretty well. There are things where people don't WANT to deal with people on the other end of the line -- those things are detrtministic, and unless something is horribly broken, a simple machine easily gives all the necessary information, performs simple transactions, etc.
What is my account's balance? Is some payment past due? When will the package arrive? Is there an outage on my service? How much does this thing cost? Will you reimburse me for this? Do you block ports? Where are you located? Transfer my money to another account. Send this to my address. Process this application. Get a credit card payment.
You don't need a human to answer those things. Actually you DO need a human if you want him to answer or perform them wrong, to pretend that numbers are not what they are, that there is no problems when there definitely are some, to claim that they don't do something, to blame someone else, to pretend to be annoyed, to throw a lot of irrelevant offers, to have problems with handset, or (my favorite) not understanding someone's accent. Human ingenuity is a great help when simple answer exists, but should be hidden at all costs.
For all those simple things one doesn't need humans, he needs a web site. Or, for people that don't use computers, or are away from them, a simple phone menu. And it will serve its purpose much better than a bunch of minimum-wage drones with headsets ever would.
Humans are needed for other things, to answer questions that are not asked 65537 times a day, to explain meanings of obscure things that someone's customer may or may not know but it's hard to list all of them on a web site or especially in a phone menu. Humans can make decisions, ask questions based on things that are hard to place in a menu, but those things are far beyond what "AI" can do anyway. It would be foolish to try to replace humans there -- in fact anything that needs "AI" actually needs a human because at this level of technology development AI simply doesn't exist as anything usable. In those cases a proposal to use a machine to do a human's job would be so insane, only Harvard MBA would ever think of such a thing.
But for the rest of things, I would really prefer a machine.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Enum initiative. I refer you to this IETF page and also this article on Enum in NetworkWorldFusion.
Anna B
A friend of mine (telemarketer) - good at his job - told me one simple thing. A good telemarketer is glad when you say No.
Because the sooner he concludes that call, the sooner he can get onto the next call which may be a good prospect. Only an incompetent will hang on and try and convert a No into a Yes instead of going out hunting for the Yeses that are waiting for him out there somewhere.
So I always (a) help the telemarketers in their job by politely making it clear, quickly, that I'm not a good prospect and (b) if they don't take that on board, tell them what competence in telemarketing is.
(b) pisses them off no end but by then they've deserved it.
My good god Planet Internet has awful technical support. I have to call a 900 number and PAY to be put on hold when they have network problems. And don't think about emailing them, 3 weeks later the best I get is 'change your ISDN settings'. ARRRGHHH *bangs head against table*
Thanks for letting me get this out of my system in English haha
One tech support operator can handle multiple people at once with an online system. That's the cost savings! Of course Planet's argument would be 'why bother with a human at all'
There are things that they do badly.
"My bill is 100x what it should be"... the menus aren't going to help with an automated response to that problem.
Any kind of technical support. If one has a problem that can't be resolved by reading the FAQ and searching the vendor's tech database, a bot that parses one's question and keyword-matches it to another FAQ is very unlikely to provide a remotely appropriate answer.
Altavista used one of those bots a while ago for its customer service, making me an early adopter of alltheweb. It's response e-mails said "hit the link to escalate to a human"... without providing the link.
ICQ's e-mail "customer service" ... same thing... the first try or two, one thinks that one might be dealing with a retarded human. Third time, one knows that it's a bot and there is no way to escalate to a human. Unfortunately, the person I contact this way is not technically clued, so switching to a service run by the clued isn't really an option, if I could get overseas to install a better IM client, I wouldn't need one.
But I still don't know why my SMS messages, a service which ICQ promotes actively, never get through to their destination or if the problem can be fixed (it's listed in the Network listing and actually worked a couple of months ago), and it's the service I need most. I don't recommend ICQ a lot to other people.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Predictive diallers are the curse of the earth. The number of times my dinner has been interrupted by a phone call, which I pick up only to obtain a ringing tone, which I very quickly hang up on, beggars belief. There is only one solution to this (if you're in the UK): as soon as anyone rings, say "Please remove all details relating to this telephone number and address from your databases". They have a legal obligation to do so.
Whatever it is in the US that you lot insist on calling a "Union", isn't a Union. Really. This may come as a shock to you, but it isn't supposed to work that way. Unions work perfectly well in the rest of the world, but it seems that in the US a "Union" is simply a tool which a) The workers use to be lazy b) Something which is used to extract and extort money from companies and c) Something which is used to obstruct a company. In anything but the most extreme cases, companies and Unions will happily work together, and the Unions will happily take resonable action to allow them to operate effectively (E.g. closing an unprofitable branch or office. Provided they let the Union know, and make an effort to re-locate employees, the Unions will sit back and let the company get on with it)
Unions are supposed to be a protection for the workers to stop explotation by the bosses. That doesn't mean that you suddenly have to force everyone to join the Union (A Union only shop? Please! Anything like that would be shot down as descriminatory any place but the US). Being a Union member does not mean that you should suddently suspend all common sense ("Duh, its not my job to pick up that peice of paper, call the Paper Picker Up Union! Duh...."). It is not the job of the Union to protect lazy or incompetent workers.
Get yourself some proper unions, and a clue stick for all the lazy and idiotic workers who are using a Union as some kind of invicibility shield ("Your threats of the sack cannot harm me, my Union is like a shield of steel!") and you might actually have something that works.
To get rid of junk telephone calls and most junk mail in the UK:
I'm on both lists, and I was surprised at how effective these were. I used to be called most Sundays, now I'm never called. I used to receive an absolute torrent of junk mail, now it's barely a trickle.
Quick tip: when registering for the Mailing Preference Service, don't forget to register common misspellings of your name, your partner's name, your children's name, anyone who lived their previously for whom you still receive mail...you get the idea.
Cheers,
Ian
A lot of this outsourcing also goes to Canada and the Philippines. In one "funny story", my wife, who's Filipino, received a call from a AT&T telemarketer based in the Philippines.
The last time I asked a Telemarketer to do this, they told me that it was only good for 6 months, and then I would have to ask them to remove me from the list again. I think telemarketing should be considered harassment and treated as such. It is not pleasant being woken up four or more times a day. Especially when one works overnights.
'Pleasure is the Disease, Pain is the Cure' - Lilith
Yes, I prefer automated phone systems. You can always depend on a machine to do exactly what it's programmed to do. You cannot always depend on a human. Far too often I have spoken to incompetent persons who put me on hold, tried to figure out the answer to my question, and then ended up making something up so I would hang up and the next person to answer my next call would have to think.
Really.
Granted, there are questions that can't be answered by machines, like those that require thinking, so hire a person for that and make the phone tree have an option to talk to a person only when necessary.
I wanted to take a bus from my house to some remote location. I call up the bus-line to ask them a question.
...
...
Blah Blah Country Transit Thanks you for calling. If you have a touch tone phone, press 1
I figure what the hell... it might be faster than waiting on hold for a live person. BEEP, I press 1.
Thank you for using our new automated system. If you know the route number, press 1, if you would like a list of route numbers, press 2. BEEP (Press 2)
At this point it starts listing off the route numbers. Oh my god! There are 30 or 40 routes here! The route I want is about 12th on the list. Whew!
Now that I have the route number I could punch it in. BEEP BEEP.
If you are heading northbound, press 1. If you are heading southbound, press 2
BEEP
If you are leaving from [slight voice change] Watertown mall [slight voice change again] Press 1. If you are leaving from [change] Whatever St. [change] Press 2. If you are
It turns out my stop was 5th on the list. BEEP.
Please select the location to which you are going. If your going to [change] Stupid Avenue [change] Press 1
Holy sh*t. F*ck this. I had to take 3 different busses to get where I was going and this was going to take me an hour just to figure out how to get there! BEEP (hit 0 for a live person).
[Real voice comes on] Where are you leaving from? Where do you need to go? When are you leaving?
Okay, get on bus 15 southbound at 3:30, get off at Whatever Streeet...
The live person took about 2 minutes to get me the information I needed. I spent longer than that just figuring out the NUMBER of the FIRST ROUTE I was to take.
The automated system was such a joke. Damn, I would never had made it anywhere if that is the only way to get the information.
The model with the cellphone on Softroad's site is the actor that plays the nerdy lab rat on C.S.I.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
As some have pointed out, sometimes live human beings aren't much better, and in fact are worse.
I know it's a little different than a tech support line, but the company where I work was recently bought out by a larger company.
The company's policy was that no one has voicemail for external calls - It all goes to an answering service.
The problem is that while there were issues with voicemail that caused it to have a bad rep when it first came out, answering services in general are regarded as being low-quality.
Especially here - We're a tech company. We can't have suppliers/customers calling and getting some stupid teenager or old lady who is going to munge the details of whatever the message is. Plus, most of our existing customer base is used to being able to leave a voicemail message that goes *directly* to the intended recipient, not through some middle-person. (Let's not even get into issues regarding proprietary information here...)
Fortunately, the two locations that just merged in have been given an exception - We're now allowed to use voicemail again, but our messages must say, "Please press 0 to talk to a person". Overall, I'm impressed with the sensibilities of the new company. (But all the new red tape sucks...)
A human is not necessarily the best option...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
First thing to say on a automated phone service, should be
"please feel free to press 9 at any time to talk to one of our customer attendants"
or some such thing. Sometimes, those automated phone services are great since you can memorize the numbers you punch to get to where you need to go, other times, they suck since you only use them once a year. Give the people the option.
Stop the brainwash
If your state doesn't have a list, push for one.
Female Telemarketer (FT): Hi. Blah blah, MCI, blah blah. Long distance blah blah.
Me: I have two roommates and I can't make phone service decisions without talking to them.
FT: Blah save money blah blah.
Me: I'm really not interested right now.
FT: But blah blah blah.
Me: I'm kind of busy right now.
FT: But blah blah.
Me: Mam, I'm masturbating.
FT: Oh... umm... uhh... you enjoy yourself then.
Me: Thanks.
*click*
Never heard from them again.
That next person you "interact" will probably be
Indian. Call centers in England and Australia
are already being outsouced to India.
So, while you're getting all touchie-feely about
customer service, remember that not only are your
technical jobs being out-sourced to India (going
rate is about $12k per year for a PhD who can
crank out quality MS compliant code en-bulk), but
even your white trash trailer park minimum wage
cushie desk-phone jobs are going away as well.
enjoy your econmic decline into the thrid world.
Most business folks in charge of post-sales support can't or don't prove or quantize any profitable return in delivering quality service to customers. They do realize that they need to provide assistance and communicate with their customers, but are so unconcerned with the real 'end-user' result that they always go for the cheapest means of delivering such service. At a place like AT&T Broadband, with millions in customers having issues every day, there is no way to handle the volume at a cost that won't sink the ship other than automating it.
THIS FUCKING SUCKS AND IS A RESULT OF THE HUGE SIZE OF BUSINESSES TODAY. FUCK THE CORPORATIONS!
I disagree about the "lame" part, though. Any PR stunt that costs nothing but has thousands of people reading it is pretty good (from a PR perspective, anyway). I say, "Slashdot, though hast been hacked". It will happen again.
We used to say "please take me off your list", but the response was almost always the same:
Me: "Please take me off your list"
Spammer: "No." -Click
Very useful.
Solution 1: Lead them on with feigned interest for long enough to determine their company and product, then ask to stay off the list.
Solution 2: Caller ID. Don't like the number - don't answer.
Solution 3: The pause. When you answer with a "hello", there's a longish pause as the computer connects you to the live person. This one-second delay is your chance to hang-up.
Solution 4: Some areas offer call blocker service, which takes the "out of area" calls and asks them to release their phone number to your caller ID before your phone ever rings. Very clever commercials behind this.
Yes, mensa259 is right! He/she was smart enough to fool /.
You link to a TIME article; "...like TIME, is owned by AOL Time Warner)". The article mentions "background" product placement in movies. I assume they mean "background" placement like this?
Anyway... I'd have some hope of the /. eds actually looking out for this kind of crap but A) They obviously dont read their own zine let alone the comments, AND/OR they are the marketing scum. It really wouldn't suprise me. I think we should bug their phones, sat-track their cats, and put secret webcams in the bogs! *CowboyNeal barges into his mind* Ok scratch that.
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
A 11.5 hour shift doing next to nothing is suprisingly exhausting.
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Suck me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"