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The Return Of The Live Human Being

Posted by timothy on from the voice-menu-hell dept.

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?"

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The WORST one of these has to be.... by glamslam · · Score: 2, Informative
    I just tried to get information from SprintPCS about my bill. When I pressed 0 enough times to bypass Clair, I was told I was going to be CHARGED $3 for speaking to a service representative.

    This should be illegal. (As soon as my 10 year contract runs out, I'm switching.)

    "So what if we're controlling all the oil, is it worth a child dying for?" -- Prince (1991)

  2. This story is just a lame PR stunt by outlier · · Score: 5, Informative
    This story was most likely generated by someone doing PR for LivePerson.
    Evidence:
    • It does not link to a real story, instead just says nice things about the company.
    • It was submitted to plastic.com in nearly the exact same format. Registered users can check the submission cue there. Here's how it is listed:

      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?

    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...
  3. Re:The WORST one of these has to be.... by bug506 · · Score: 2, Informative

    What's funny about Claire is that if you say "Let me speak to a customer representative," she tries to trick you into not getting to one. She says "OK, but let me determine where to direct your call." When you give her more information, she kindly suggests that you keep talking to her about that topic instead.

    The funniest part, though, is that if you insist on still talking to someone, she sounds so sad about it before she connects you.

    (Though, at least they give you the OPTION of speaking to someone--at some places they've gotten smart about pressing 0 or * or # to speak to someone; now they'll just say it is an unrecognized command and disconnect you after a few attempts.)

    Of course, the problem with Sprint PCS is that even when I get to a real person, they almost never fix my problem or they make my problem worse.