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?"
Of course, those same companies then blow a huge wad of money on 12 Exchange servers. Sheesh...
Carl
Vote Libertarian
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.
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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.
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
Hell yea!
Story time: I use Qwest for my biz dsl. I like how when I call up, I am often very quickly connected to what I believe is maybe 10 tech support people (i've gotten the same ones numerous times...). Regardless, the customer service is excellent when it comes to getting a human for tech support.
What I DON'T NEED is for when my line goes down, I call up, find that there is a 45 min wait now, and am stuck on hold to find out why. It's at these times that I wish there was an automated voice coming in saying "there is a line problem affecting areas in x, y, z which was discovered at 0:00 and will take approximately this much time to fix."
Why can't companies figure out a nice way of handling tech support with a good combination of AI and human support?
I think many companies that rely on customer support need to do a user survey of their audience to see if the automated systems are efficient in expediting calls from the users, both in answering quick questions with automated responses (not 30 levels deep) as well as quickly routing problem calls to live support.
One of the worst companies I've found that has moved to an automated system is SprintPCS. GOD DAMN is it awful. Not only is it awful, but they CHARGE YOU to use their non-automated systems. Talk about passing the cost to the user. $5 just to have someone help you pay your bill. It's free to do it over the phone with the automated assistant and your credit card, or over the internet, but the minute a PERSON is involved, it's $5.
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.
As someone who bought LivePerson for a retail financial services call center, my personal perspective is that LP (or any Internet customer service chat) has less to do reintroducing one-on-one communications between CSRs and customers than providing even greater operating economies between reps and customers than phone-based call centers.
In a phone-based call center, one rep talks to one customer at a time. In a LivePerson call center, one rep can talk to two or three or four customers at a time. That means it can take at least two or three or four times as long to get the same questions answered (before factoring in the lag time associated with typing the responses on a keyboard, etc.). The reason you add LP to your call center is because your marketing people want to advertise it, not because it will bring your customers closer to you or provide them better service. By the numbers, it won't.
There are Internet technologies that improve customer service. VoIP and screen sharing have the potential to revolutionize service by providing a richer customer/rep experience. But chat is a gimmick in most applications. Unless they have only one phone line, most Internet customers are better off calling for service rather than using chat.
You have obviously never, ever dealt with a union when you had to get a job done. They obstruct, and demand obesiance, lest they choose to make your life hell. I'm not talking about being a boss over them, I'm talking about dealing with them in business. And as for the union chiefs, corrupt does not even begin to describe them. The Mexican government is less corrupt.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Your friend does know it's a crime to impersonate a federal agent, right...?