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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?"
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.
.
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 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
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
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
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.
-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.
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!
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fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
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."
Does your company employ a call center? Does that call center support a project you're working on? Would you prefer to spend your work day on the project, or answering phone calls from customers? If you're answering phone calls, then who's working on the project? If you'd prefer to to work on the project, while someone else buffers you from the phone line, then you're just hiding from your customers. Shame on you! Drop whatever you're doing and get on the phones right now!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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...
"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.
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.
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.
My point is that often I will have composed a significant amount of text elsewhere and am copying/pasting it in for posting. The automation of the system is a hindrance. They can limit spamming posts in other ways without having it effect my typing speed.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
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
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.
California inmates took TWA reservations.
The only reason there was a scandal is that
they continued to work during a TWA strike.
People in some kinds of "correctional" situations
*SHOULD* be able to work. Regular jobs, not
"making license plates, cleaning up roadsides" sort of make-work, but real paying jobs. Why not?
I once had a guy work for me who was on a work-release program. In the mornings, he left the jail, went to work. In the evening, he went back to jail. By doing this, he was not only earning a little money, but he was able to shorten his sentence.
I'm tired of hearing about how prison labor (PAID prison labor, mind you) is some sort of problem in and of itself. There is a problem with a privatizes prison system that enjoys a profit incentive for incarcerating increasing numbers of nonviolent offenders on simple drug possession laws, particularly when the majority of the "drugs" in play happen to be the most harmless ones.
That's a different horse to whip.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
(* 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.
Adelphia used to run a 30 second advertisement for their sports package when you called their tech support number. Then you got to endure a half-hour wait. They've improved that though since last year. Now you get an idiot on the phone within 2 minutes, that tells you to reboot your computer and/or reset your cable modem.
I know about techtales.com for posting stupid user stories, but is there a site for people to post stories about their experiences with stupid "technicians"?
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
When you call Sprint PCS, 'claire' answers the phone. She's supposed to respond to voice commands and give you your balance, payment info, etc. Problem is, most everyone that uses Sprint PCS gets billed incorrectly, and claire can't help you with that. When you ask for a real person believe it or not, claire argues with you! I have discovered that she does understand the work 'fuck' however (as in "give me a fucking person, claire"). All in all, I can't possibly understand why anyone likes this robobitch.
You nailed it brother. Aside from those two facts (which are great reasons not to privatize prisons) you also have to look at the fact that a guard at a private prison is going to make about 1/2 to 2/3 the salary of a guard at a state or federal prison. What kind of person do you think you're going to get who will put up with that kind of work for $8/hr? (Especially in women's and children's penal institutions) You're going to get someone who's abusive and/or unqualified for the job.
Aside from the social taboos involved, do you really want a convicted felon knowing your name, address, phone number, and credit card information?
How many of you get a little snotty to a phone rep when they're stupid? Do you think inmates are the cream of the intellectual crop? Do you think they won't hesistate to show up at your house when they get out if you piss em off?
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
People working as tech support people in software companies often seem to get demands from customers: They want to talk to the developer in charge of whatever they have a problem with. Somehow, a lot of people think that they are so much more important than everyone else that it warrants pulling the developer away from an important project to do customer service instead. It just doesn't make sense.
If one customer is allowed to talk to a developer, why shouldn't all of them? And what would the result be?
The developer wouldn't get any work done, and you would basically have a hideously expensive support person.
I ask you to think about the consequences of what you are asking for. Have you?
It's not that the companies have something to hide. It's that they have hired people specifically so the others can get some work done.
People tend to jump to conclusion when they don't know what they are talking about. I ask you to think about it, just for a few minutes. I am sure you will understand what I am saying, if you haven't already.
Clever signature text goes here.
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
Prisoners are slave labor. It's bad enough that we have to compete with people in India and Mexico who are willing to work for a fraction of what we get paid for. Others have beat the case FOR this sort of thing to death so I'll only point out that it is quite enough to have to put up with. For all the bitching people do about cheap foreign labor at least they aren't slaves (usually). Prisoners most certainly are. If they don't do this work then their sentences are extended and they can expect harsher treatment. You think YOU'RE powerless in the face of PHB's? At least you can quit and get something better. Not so a prisoner. Also, the wages paid to prisoners for their "real" jobs are vastly lower than what you or I can negotiate in a real interview. Yeah, they're "PAID" alright. Check it out:
t m
http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/prison.h
It is hard enough to get and hold a decent job as it is right now. I DO NOT want to compete with slave labor in my own country. Now prisons supplying services for EACH OTHER and lowering the overall cost of the prison system is something I would be for. It doesn't create a demand for slavery.
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
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.
Suck me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"