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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.""
It sorta works, actually... I had to call Verizon support once, and they had one of those voice-recognition systems, where they ask you a bucnh of questions and you're supposed to speak the answer and then they try to figure out how to route the call. I started speaking gibberish, and I was connected to an operator within seconds.
Yes, this technology shouldn't be used to torture service reps with customers at the peak of their rage. Instead, use it to send 'em to voicemail with a special message indicating that they'll get a priority call back. That'll give them some time to cool off, and give the rep a chance to calmly gauge the priority based on customer type.
I buy a lot of stuff on the web. So, every once in a while, a company will screw up. In pursuing a remedy, I always start out pleasant and accomodating. But once they start in with typical incompentent customer service behaviour, like responding to an email with questions that were already answered in the original email, I start to respond with full-scale profanity and insults. Inevitably the profanity gets good results and usually very quickly.
In my opinion this is the stupidest way to run customer service. It encourages customers to mistreat your employees. The good companies never let the problem get to the point where profanity is needed, but I am, quite frankly, surprised at the number of companies that have such poor customer service organizations that the profanity route becomes mandatory.
By the way, I discovered this method one day after going round and round and round with a company so many times that I was completely hopeless. So I decided to vent a little steam, figuring that I was never going to get things fixed anyways and that any self-respecting person would just cut off correspondence once the profanity started. Man, was I surprised at how quickly they jumped to fix things after that, completely the opposite of what I had expected.
I tried to report dead birds to my state health department. They didn't care. They *so* didn't care. I don't think the functionary even looked up from her novel while she told me on the phone that they do not take reports of dead birds.
Now, I know from numerous public service announcements that, not only is the department supposed to take reports of dead birds, but I am required to make them. So I called the Federal CDC, to find out what was up. Naturally they directed me right back to the same State department that dismissed me earlier. I managed to complain my way up the ladder until I reached someone who at least could tell me *why* they don't take reports (legislature pulled their funding.)
So maybe West Nile Virus will break out in my area, and I will be able to go to DC with the names of the individuals who couldn't be bothered to take reports of dead birds...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Sometime the trick is dialing 0-0. Or *-# or some weird combo. Or, you can try dialing random extensions to get in touch with a real person who has nothing to do with your problem at all, but they'll be happy to transfer you to the correct department.
However, lately it's been sometimes happening that when I try this I get immediately disconnected.
They're catching on.
Two weeks ago I made several calls to the automated Sears Appliance Repair system. I was trying desperately to cancel a service call I had requested. The first time I called I wandered through the maze of "Yes" and "Service Repair" and "Cancel" options only to be put on hold for 10 minutes and then be disconnected.
During the second call I lost my cool and started yelling at the damn thing. My wife came in and wondered what the hell I was doing. I was getting madder and madder. "YES!" "YES!" I SAID YES, DAMMIT!" When I finally got to the point of screaming "YES, BITCH!" the freaking thing said something to the effect of "You have selected 'Cancel' - Thank you" and hung up.
On the third call I was hotter than ever, but made sure I didn't call it a bitch.
FED-EX, on the other hand, immediately defaults to a live person on its system if it doesn't understand something. A much more gratifying experience.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
The last time I had to call Verizon repair services I was trapped in their new phone system, and my phone line was so noisy (hence the service call) that their voice recognition was not recognizing. I cursed at it a couple of times, and it asked me if I wanted to end the call. I said, "No!", and it continued.
To test it, I cursed again, and sure enough, it said sweetly, "Would you like to end this call?"
As an aside, I have had so many problems with my phone line that I now have my own personal Verizon rep, with a direct line to her office. But she seems pretty ineffective, so now I'm composing a letter to Mr. Seidenberg to see if he can get the damned line to work.
Actually, I think a form of this was used at Microsoft a while back. I remember interviewing there (when I was young and confused) and being told by the interviewer that if you enter something like "This fucking thing won't work" into the help system, it automatically gives you the number for tech support. The idea is that if you're that unhappy you should really be speaking to a liver person, not navigating through the help system. Then again, I never actually confirmed this, and apparently it's not true for word XP.
Will the general population continue to value "cheap" and "more" above all else? This will force companies to cut costs above all else. "Evil" corporations aren't successful for no reason at all.
I once heard a statistic that the profit margin from a PC was used up in one tech support call. That sounds a tad extreme, but I remember the tiny, tiny markup on computer parts from when I worked at a small family-owned computer store. When my mom worked at Koenig's Art Emporium, the manager refused to carry anything he couldn't mark up more than 40%. Aquarium stores average 50% (operation costs on livestock must be considered, but the markup is on everything). We probably would have killed for 20 in most cases. It was not uncommon to make only a few dollars on a hard drive. I suspect the situation has worsened rather than improved, and there were companies underselling us at the computer shows (usually with lesser warranties).
[Of course, being in a small shop, I was building/fixing systems while taking tech support calls, so that wasn't a big hit for us.]
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I once had to call SallieMae to figure out why my regular student loan payments had just suddenly increased after 4 straight years of steady decline. I dialed into their oh-so-thoughtfully designed voice mail monstrosity, and proceeded to get routed back and forth into SEVEN different voice mail sub-systems. Each time I was transferred, the new system would greet me with the classic lie, "Your call is important to us". After five minutes of trawling through this POS looking for a department that actually contained human inhabitants, I finally bellowed "HUMAN!!!!!" as loud as I could into the receiver.
Immediately, I heard a click, then lo and behold, a human voice said, "Thank you for calling SallieMae, how may I help you?"
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Here's a true example from my life last week:
- Register.com has put a lock on my domain and will not change my WHOIS informatin and will not unlock it so I can move to a different registrar. My domain register fees are paid up until March of 2005.
- I call Register.com. They say they have no account data on me because I registered via a 3rd party. I have to call my hosting company.
- I call my hosting company. They attempt to make the changes through their partners channel with Register.com. Register.com refuses to change the information or to unlock the domain.
- I call Register.com again. They say they can't/won't help me and to email their partner channel email.
- I email the partner channel and they say I have to go through my hosting company to make those changes.
- I go back to my hosting company and provide them with the email from Register.com in a hope that they could use that as evidence to make Register.com do their damn job!
- Register.com refuses to make the change.
Is this the way to impress you customers? What good will cussing them out do if they don't give a damn whether they help you or not? No, this scheme will only work if the company in question actually cares about customer service. Most companies see customer service as a cost center.When I worked in a record retail store, we had a policy posted above the cashier that all sales were final. Well, the thing was, if a customer came in and got mad at the counter and wouldn't leave, the manager would refund their money to get them to go out.
I always felt this was shitty - aggressive, loud, selfish people got their money back while polite, friendly, non-confrontiational people didn't. I always thought everyone should be treated the same.
On the other hand, if we wanted to reward some people and not others, why then I felt it should be the other way around - tell the assholes to get lost - call security if necessary - and give money back to people who were polite and nice about it. Geez, it might even begin to instill some politeness in some people.
Then again, I've benefitted from this. At a local art store, they have a policy to give discounts to students. One day, the cashier asked someone in front of me if they were a student, when it came to my turn, I wasn't asked and forgot to provide my student card. When I remembered, just after having paid, the cashier refused. When I asked her to phone the manager, she did so and then turned to me with a very smug look and said she couldn't do it. I left, but was so angry (at her smugness at this point), I went back in and demanded to have the manager to tell me to my face that I didn't deserve the discount. This time I got it.
I guess it is just a case of "the squeaky wheel gets the oil". It is probably not good to encourage this, though.
The problem is that one can be polite yet still asertive--yet for some reason or another most people only learn that to be assertive they have to be a jerk. And that's why society seems to be turning into a bunch of jerks--because no one knows how to be polite yet assertive anymore.
There are of course exceptions...
It is my understanding that ambulance officers are specifically instructed to ignore accident victims that make excessive amounts of noise. This is because if you are alive enough to yell for help then you are more likely to survive than someone who isn't yelling for help.