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Curse Your Way to Live Support
EtherMonkey writes "Wired is reporting on new software developed at University of Southern California's Speech Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory. Researchers there have come up with working code to detect the frustration and anger level of callers working their way through automated attendant phone systems."The system works by analyzing not only what callers say, but also how they say it. Callers get transferred if they start to spit out expletives or if they simply sound angry.""
As if taking live calls in a helpdesk weren't bad enough already, now they want to ensure the caller hits maximum frustration and anger before we let them talk to a real person. Great. That'll make everyone's jobs much easier. Oh, and I'm sure it'll increase customer satisfaction as well.
Buy the President
So, what, because I am the epitome of human patience I get to speak to machines all day, while captian rage gets transferred to a human automatically?
... oh wait, it works!
What a bunch of complete ****
This is truly useless software. Is anyone who calls support happy? If you are, are you after wading through 100 voice menus and waiting 30 minutes to get to a real person? And, can you be happy when you talk to someone who knows absolutely nothing, transfers you and your call gets dropped?
A better solution is for companies to simply provide good technical support staffed by knowledgable and competent people.
...but will it detect irony ? "... yes but of course I am willing to take the server offline and install an other operating system so your tool you sold me for a lot of money will work..." Or is the time measured untill you hang up ? If the caller hangs up early he was very angry. If he/she hangs up after being one hour on hold, she was not angry. Analyze who is often angry and give them premium service. Analyze who is not angry and sell them premium service.
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
On the other hand, one can readily claim that this is a tool to allow companies to better define and pursue the lower bound of just how little money and manpower they can allocate to customer service. As an asshole, you get to barge to the front of the line and berate live support that much faster; as a normal person, you'll either wait an eternity for support or get angry enough to trigger the system. The callers and tech support both lose, but the company sees an immediate reduction in support costs.
Now, which way do you all think this will swing?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Not to mention the idea that a company would be unwilling to provide actual human help to one of their customers until said customer was frustrated enough to start cursing into a telephone. Gee, that's just impeccable customer service, don't you think?
I should know; I've been one of the people cursing into the phone before. This should come as a surprise to no one: the company in question was a major "fast-running" (wink wink) cell service provider. I had recently moved, and was trying to get my number switched over to the local area code. Never have I dealt with so much frustration in my life, before or since.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I hate seeing this sort of stuff. Because a customer is angry, you decide to give them better support than someone who treats you well. The obvious next step is that if someone takes his anger out on the help desk worker, they get to speak to a manager / higher level support person. Is his actual problem any more real / difficult to solve than the person who contains their frustration and treats the employees with respect? Who would you rather have as a customer?
That all said, there is a good use for this technology. Detect where in your phone tree people seem to be getting angry. Log that and analyse that for future use. If there are consistent places in the tree that people get frustrated with, you know where to focus your redesign efforts to make it better. Of course, you may see the anger develop two or more steps down the tree from the unclear question that causes the pissed-offedness. It'd probably take some careful analysis / research to really use this effectively.
no, the problem is minimizing service costs. They want to provide the minimum service they can get away with. No service qualifies as such and so if they can discourage you and have you dump out of the queue, they win.
HTH
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If this system becomes popular it will enforce "bad" social behaviour.
Want better or more expensive service? Swear your head off.
Want to be treated like an 7-digit number? Be polite.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I just wonder what this trains people to do in society?
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Society penalizes you for being a polite person already.
The 'jerk' effect is pretty common: given someone who's not complaining and someone who is, the establishment will take care of the person who's complaining first, in order to get them to shut up. No one likes the jerk, everyone likes the polite person, but the jerk will get seated at a restaurant first, will get their money back easier when returning something, and the like.
As a polite person, the establishment knows they can ignore you for a long time. But the jerk will cause them problems immediately.
Sad but true.
Cutting costs: That's what I meant by "to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?"
My thoughts exactly. Let's reward those that have little or no patience. While we are at it, we must punish those that have self-control. If one has the self-control to not lose their temper with an inanimate object then one's length of time on hold will be increased.
The real answer is to put people to work answering the phone. Yes, they cost more than the computer system costs in the short term, but all your customers are happier in the long run also. Besides that, if more people are working the cost can be distributed to more customers and the economy improves, etc.
In the long run everyone would be better off! Well, except the guy that invented and probably patented this concept. And if we crush his patent aren't we better off also?
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
I renew my call for a "Clueless" moderation category.