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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?
'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 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
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.
No, good call centre people aren't impossible to hold on to. It merely requires that they be treated as what they are: valuable employees who are often the main point of contact for your customers, who you presumably want coming back.
An enlightened call centre manager who understands that a poorly run call centre will cost the company custom will try to employ good people, pay and treat them accordingly.
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
"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
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
This looks like an example of stealth marketing.
Yeah, but I showed them -- I didn't bother to click on the links, I went straight to the comments. Hah!
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.