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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.
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...
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
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
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.
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