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.""

Comments

That's great...

[Mephie]

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.

re: that's great...

[ed.han]

actually, given that the user can set the app to trigger at [x] frustration level, perhaps not. i'm sure that some will deploy it as you describe, but perhaps not.

however, my question: let's say dell's call center starts using this. if this fact becomes known, everyone will simply abuse it (a la all the tourette's comments), thereby doing nothing at all to improve the customer call experience.

so you would have to deploy it in stealth mode, basically: nobody would know.

also, something that bugs me personally: this system rewards the short-attention span, short-fused sorts, not the calm, patient callers. is anybody seeing this as a good trend?

ed

Anger management

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

What a bunch of complete **** ... oh wait, it works!

Is anyone who calls happy?

[pcause]

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.

Irony

[derphilipp]

...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.

Hmm.

[American AC in Paris]

On one hand, this can easily be presented as a way to improve customer service by detecting and addressing angry customers quickly and appropriately. Your normal tech support people answer 'patient' calls, and you set up and train a 'high-risk' support center to handle irate callers. As a normal caller, you end up speaking to a tech that doesn't have to deal with assholes. As an asshole, you get shunted to a person who is specially trained to deal with you. Everybody wins.

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?

That's Sad

[errxn]

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.

Re:YEEEHAAAA

[gi-tux]

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?