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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.""
If this were used at Microsoft, would this mean that the automated system would never be used?
Why do I foresee an increase of callers with Tourrettes?
(auto attendant)Thank you for calling XYZ corp. For support, press
(customer) FUCK SHIT DAMN HELL BITCH!!!
(auto attendant) Transferring to an attendant. Thanks for calling XYZ Corp.
(customer) SCHWEET.
Sent from your iPad.
So instead of dialing 0, I'll just say shit over and over and try to sound as mad as possible.
I wonder if the system could be programmed to forward to Darl's extension if I were to say the words litigious bastards?
Why do i get the feeling that when Howard Dean needs tech support on this system, he'll be put through in 0.05 seconds :)
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 ****
Can they make the software interface with the wife/gf? When I swear, she offers premium support!
When someone finally gets through to a real person after cursing their way through the system, it will probably be Helga from the old Kremlin Customer Support. She take care of you!
Wouldn't transferring people based on their anger level just make them more annoyed? "I'm sorry, you've sworn too much- I'm transferring you now to our new 'ultra-swearing system'" (insert a series of expletives here from angry customer) "Error- $SwearNum overflow...press Ctrl-ALt-Del on your phone to restart system"
Just hit 0 until the automated system gets frustrated and forwards you to a human being. It works almost every time, and saves you the frustration of dealing with the automated system in the first place.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
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.
Now when all the operators are "currently busy" helping other customers and I'm still stuck yelling at a machine, I'll know it's because the Adrew Dice Clay's of the world have priority over be due to their mouths.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
I prefer to press "0" at the automated phone tree, and save the outbursts of profanity for the morons who tell me they can't help me with my billing problem.
I am sure the people who sell search engine how-tos will be churning out scripts for customers to properly ramp up their anger.
If service agent says "blah blah blah" you respond "yada yada yada" for 10 anger management points but pause for 3 seconds during your statement to ensure that you anger velocity quotient does not exceed 50 fcks/min
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
The automated attendant at Dell:
Thank you for calling Dell's Customer Support Line. If you're experiencing a frustrating issue, please drop the F-bomb now..
Word processors have destroyed my ability to spell. So now call centers will destroy my ability to speak without profanity, right? Wait... working in software has already done that. :)
I read in a newspaper in the train that this technology also can be used to detect lies. A lie-meter would be shown on the telephone indicating how much the other person lies. Finally a a useful technology.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
How about writing aprogram what actually helps solve the users' suport request? Isn't the real purpose of an automated calling system to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?
My problem with phone support is that is seems to take so long to establish that I know what i'm talking about, and trying to tell them what I need. It's rare that I call tech support and actually need them to diagnose a problem for me. It would be nice to have a customer profile that incorporates a product proficiency quotient(tm). so that I can go right to an engineer or product replacement on an issue I can diagnose myself.
For account assistance, press or say ONE
If you know your party's extension, press or say TWO
For a staff directory, press or say THREE
To speak with an operator, press FOUR or say "SHIT SHIT ASS DAMN"
To repeat this menu press *
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
...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
Yes, Lord Vader, right away Sir...
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.
Thanks for calling ABC Corp, how may...
Porcupine balls!
Transferring your call now...
(muttering) Stupid computer...
Hi, this is Mike at the Internet Help Desk, how can I help you?
I think I accidentally deleted my link to your Internet. Can I get it back?
Holy crap! We have our own Internet? Why wasn't I made aware of this?! Well, restoring your link shouldn't be a problem, unless you happen to be a rhesus monkey suffering from simian hemmorhagic fever. Does this fit your description, little man?
Uhhh....
I guess it does! Now, here's how you fix your stupid problem...
--Chag
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.
It's funny. Laugh.
Sent from your iPad.
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.
Once I was calling my bank, phoning somethig like the 5th number. Ring Ring ... hold music, voicing my frustration I say "You Bastards". unfortunately that was the very second they put me through. I hear a yorkshire accent (alliance + leicester, northern bank) stutter at the other end "W-W-W-W What did you just call me!?". Fortunately when I explained I was swearing at the machine and not him, he took it in good humour. Good thing too, wonder what he could have done to my credit rating.
Where a human being answers the phone.
Nothing pisses me off more than being kept on hold by a series of robots. Especially when it's long distance.
Setting it up to reward foul-mouthed assholes with live support just pisses me off more.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This could produce some interesting performance data for the support tech. If they can use it as a 'satisfaction rating' along with call time and all the other metrics they track in big support shops, maybe it could identify the good and bad support people. There's bound to be a lot of difference between individual callers, but if the data is normalized over a few thousand calls, it should keep things 'fair'.
Of course, this assummes that a happy-sounding customer is a satisfied customer. For instance, if a support person had a think accent, was curt, was cursed with an unpleasant voice - whatever. You probably can't dump a guy because he has a bad voice, but you might be able to if you could prove that he isn't as effective as the rest of the phone jockeys.
Fantastic! Lets deal with angry customers by rewarding the ones who are openly abusive, and therefore punishing those who are patient and calm.
The people working in the call centres are really going to thank them for that.
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.
"For the call center it is frustration -- you don't want to lose the customer because they are becoming frustrated."
i understand that they want to use the automated systems as much as possible to take the load off of people, but if they are finding that the systems are causing so much frustration that they need to guage the amount of frustration in a person's voice in order to potentially keep them as a customer, then there's obviously flaws in the system already, and perhaps super crazy automated phone systems isn't a great customer service idea to begin with.
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.
(auto attendant)Thank you for calling XYZ corp. For support, press
(customer) BARBARA STRIESAND!!!
(auto attendant) Transferring to an attendant. Thanks for calling XYZ Corp.
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.
Anger Powered Cars
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.
Let me get this straight, you have to try to sound mad????
Man, who provides your support, I want them!!!
Ex: 3 minutes of blather and advertising before the menu, option you want isn't apparent so you spend 10 minutes jumping around and going through the blather and ads again, you finally seem to find where you mean to be and wait 20 minutes listening to elevator music which soulnds like it is played through a broken kazoo, you finally get a voice and either it's a recording telling you they are now closed (please call back during the hours you are at work and can't call them) or you do get a human who informs you that this is the wrong department and transfers you to another queue.
It's not all as bad as that, but if I were telekinetic there would be companies who would find their own equipment exploding in a shower of sparks and a few executives who would spontaneously fill their shorts (loudly) at the most inopportune times.
Hmm... Inspiration.
You hear a tinny voice say, "worst customer service, ever!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
if (profanity == "fsck")
// Nerd with unsolvable Lunix problem, probably
// complaining that Winmodem doesn't work with
// self-compiled kernel. Will rant at you for
// not releasing source to driver.
{
customer.type = 5;
hangup();
}
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
User: Hi, we'll be calling tech support today, I'm having difficulty with my internet.
Operator: Dialing now, just a moment.
User: Thanks.
Operator: Automated menu, 1 for customer support, 2 for accounting, 3 for collections
User: SHIT! SHIT WHORE!
Operator: Sorry?
User: Say that. It'll transfer you faster.
Operator: If I say that, my boss will transfer me faster.
User: Seriously, just swear at it.
Operator: No.
User: C'mon, if you don't we'll both be on hold forever.
Operator: I'm not going to swear at it.
User: Say, what are you wearing?
Operator: What?!
User: That's the spirit, let's continue. Gimme a good 'ASSFACE BUTTLICKER' so we can get to a tech.
Operator: There's something wrong with you.
User: Are you making fun of me because I'm deaf?
Operator: What? No, not at all.
User: You are, aren't you?
Operator: No, I didn't mean it that way.
User: Like I don't get enough crap from everyone else, now I'm being mocked by a bloody TDD operator.
Operator: Sir, I didn't mean it that way, I swear.
User: I'll forgive you if you say "PIECE OF SHIT, HURRY UP"
Operator: Dammit, no, I'm not gonna.. oh, it's transferring me.
User: What did you say?
Operator: Nevermind.
- billn
This is why Best Buy purchaced Geek Squad (at no small expense) even though adding on-site product support does nothing to bring in new customers.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Am I the only one who LIKES automated phone systems?
I hate telephones, and I'm not a big fan of people either. Usually, I'm just calling to find some bit of information - an address, hours of operation, etc. The fewer real human beings I have to talk to, the better.
As for cursing at the automated system to get a human on the phone...I spend enough time cursing at machines as it is. Besides, what if the cursing has nothing to do with the phone call? "Honey, can you turn down the f*cking television!? I'm on the godd*mn pho...oh, hello?"
You don't have to be the person you've become.
Now it's all about Janet's tit.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
I would like to take this opportunity to request you to please spend the rest of the week responding to the rest of the /. dicks with no sense of humour. You have that special gift of getting to the point and having a good insult thrown in for good measure.
Stay tuned for new sig...
What you fail to realize is it's the meek who are the problem!
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.
Do what Symantec did (still does?):
Charge for support! That's right, paying for techies or other operators to man the phone lines costs money. We can easily pass those onto the customer who needs them...after all, not everybody needs these services if you can do it yourself. Charging people a modest $2.95 a minute (or $29.95 flat fee!) to speak to somebody will assure an efficient and speedy customer...otherwise they can try the online support.
Secondly, do as Symantec did and make sure those online documents are nowhere in sight! Hide all information in an idiotic search system that returns 500,000 hits no matter what you search for! (including document ID#).
Outsource e-mail tech support to a third world nation in which nobdoy speaks English! Northwestern China (near Mongolia) works well for this.
And, lastly, make sure the second-tier support has a 3-5 day turnaround time (in business days, and don't be open on the weekend) for those nasty calls. And when you do get them, feed 'em cherries and give 'em right back to frontline support with a free ticket number!
When you get into a VRU system, keep in mind that a human HAD to set the thing up, and always left a way for themselves to speak with a rep if needed (i.e. testing). So, when you get in, start pushing buttons, a lot of them, especially the * and #, as those will frequently be used for escape sequences. The default action for a majority of systems that do this is to immediately route you to an operator, an operator who has internal extensions. THen just act like you got a bit lost during the 4,3,6,1,8,9.... and ask politely for whatever dept you're trying to get, and ask for an extension in case you have to call back. Works roughly 85% of the time for me. :-D
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Wife: Did you call your ISP about why they've suspended your service?
Husband: I tried to call, baby, but I couldn't swear harshly or angrily enough...
Wife: Don't worry, hun, I'll tell the kids to call them in the morning.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
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.
Cutting costs: That's what I meant by "to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?"
That's good advice... assuming the options lead you to a person eventually. However, more and more automated systems don't ever give you the option of speaking to a person. This is insanely annoying when you just want to ask a simple question that isn't one of the 10-20 that you are "allowed" to ask.
Good systems subdivide you, give you a list, then have an option to talk to someone if nothing they list is what you want. But for the other 75% of systems, it's good to know how to avoid the whole mess.
I had a nearly identical experience with AT&T Wireless a couple months back. While calling to report a stolen phone, I had to say "operator" about 4 or 5 times before the thing would give up and connect me to a live person. 20 minutes later, when the live person tried to pick up, my call got disconnected. I immediately called back and asked the computer to "connect me to a f*cking operator!" when it gave me the usual list of options. The computer's response was to give me some error message about my "inappropriate" answer and hang up instantly. After that I had no choice but to go through the "operator" response five more times and sit on hold for another 30 minutes.
If you have ATTWS service, just pray that you never have to call their customer "support" line.
When do I get the system that transfers me to somebody who speaks English as a first language when it detects me getting frustrated with the outsourced tech support person I can barely understand, who needs me to spell basic words for them, and who gives me the wrong RMA number because they can't pronounce "four"?
I'm not angry or bitter, just frustrated.
That's why you have a "product proficiency quotient"(tm). The customer answers a few relevant questions about the product and the problem that they're having. This (running tally)score gets stored in the customer profile. Each time the customer calls, the phone queue mgmt sowftare decides where to insert the call into the queue based on past calls and their ppq. Mr CCIE gets injected straight to the engineer(L3) queue, no L1 or L2 support at all. Mr "i can't print, and btw aol is slow" goes to L1, and gets the benefit of basic troubleshooting.
The key is that there is value to each support level, but requiring all users to go through every level every time is inefficient, i.e more expensive.
(click)
"FBI, are you aware of what you said?"
"Ah, I just wanted my DSL to work, and they said to wait three weeks."
"You threatened to blow the place. That's a violation of federal law."
"I was just upset."
"You know that Mr. Ashcroft will do anything to protect the assets of those who invest in the United States"
"But, why should I have to wait three weeks for service."
"Sloppy service does not give you the right to threaten American investors.."
whir of sirens...
This is my sig.
What I would like to see is a way to route my calls to someone who actually speaks English as a FIRST language.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Seems to me like they're doing this backwards. If I was the receptionist, I'd be taking the calm callers and transferring the pissed off ones to the automated support system.
This is the most worthless software I have ever heard of.
The purpose of the automated calling procedures is to save money, not to connect callers with tech support.
What Pointy Haired Boss would ever buy this? It's a waste of valuable capital (from the perspective of the almighty immediate dollar).
If it was say, Dell, they coudl give the angry Tourrettes suffers and Indian rep to speak to and the patient ones can speak to an American.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
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.Keep in mind that if calls are recorded "for quality assurance purposes," it's possible that some unscrupulous employees might have access to those recordings. I forsee a web site or two devoted to funny recordings of people having irate "conversations" with automated call centers. So if you're tempted to try beating this system, at least make sure CallerID is blocked first. :-)
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.
As if live support wasn't already rare enough.
Who's going to want to work as a customer support rep after this?
SUPPORT: Hello, you've reached XYZ, how can I help you?
CUSTOMER: FUCK OFF AND DIE YOU STUPID CUNT! EAT MY SHIT!
SUPPORT: Excuse me?!
CUSOMTER: What? Oh.. oh geeze, sorry.. I thought you were a machine.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
...the operator who those calls are transfered to.
This brings an interesting concept of "matching" callers and operators. If you match the more impatient callers with operators who are able to handle those situations well and not get flustered, I'd imagine there would be less turnover. In addition, these positions could pay higher.
Tiering customer support skill would definitely be more efficient and benefit both company and customer, in my opinion.
--Ben
"There are no such things as mutual fantasies. Yours bore us and ours offend you."
- Bill Maher
I used to have a very lengthy voicemail message (about 2 minutes and 50 seconds). It explained, in detail, every single last question someone could want answered. If they did have some other question it was likely that they didn't belong calling my department or they were confused but there was still an option to leave a voicemail and I would return the call... Using this method I had limited myself to 5 or less voicemails a day since July 2003 (I would receive anywhere between 80 and 100 calls a day)...
Now. Just last week I had to remove this message and shorten it to under a minute because some asshole complained that he did not want to wait that long for the message (and he wasn't bright enough to try * or # which nearly all voicemail systems respond to to skip the message). I was first asked to put the disclaimer that you can skip the message w/the * key... Whoever thought that up was a moron. You NEVER tell someone how to skip it or the point of the voicemail message is moot.
Phone trees are apparently never checked thoroughly. They need to be tested 100s of times by different people to make sure that no matter what a call is routed to the right place. My voicemail message was corrected 5 or 6 times to make sure that it was working 100% and that no questions would be left unanswered.
Amazingly enough no one was happy except me.
Sad world we live in.
Not that a tech support job is any good to begin with, but it sounds like this system will gaurantee that the ONLY people you speak with are really pissed-off.
When I was doing tech support, I was told that whenever a customer swore at me, I was to reply, "Sir (or Ma'am), please call back when you can control your language," and hang up. Boy, angry people get REALLY mad when you call them "Sir (or Ma'am)"!
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Hey, why limit yourself to the "humorous" aspects of Tourette Syndrome (note the lack of possessive, you dyslexic fuckwit.)
y .h tm
Scenario - person different from self calls helpdesk. Hijinks ensue:
Cerebral Palsy: "MMMmmuuughghg ghghghanllggh"
Black: "Now whea dat button fo' watermelon 'n' chitlins?"
Slashdot dork (nasally voice caused by the crushing weight of coke-bottle glasses): "I've certainly learned that you're a whiny cunt."
Oh yes. This is such highbrow humor. ANYONE who is offended MUST be humor impaired.
http://www.tsa-usa.org/about_tsa/images/notfunn
Just go into Captain Haddock mode.
Try, oh say
"You odd-toed ungulates and two-timing tartar twisters, you coelacanths! I have no touch tone phone you vegetarian macrocephalic baboons! You Bashi-Bazouks! tell the dictatorial duck billed diplodocus that employs you that ten thousand terrifying turtles could not keep me as your customer."
Or something like that.
However, I don't see that swearing at an automated answering program makes you a jerk. I swear at my computer all the time. If companies want to give obnoxiously irate people preferential treatment, then those people will be their customers, while the docile masses migrate to where they can stand in a queue without 'cutters' being allowed.
Eat at Joe's.
It's true. I am what most people would generally call polite, but I've found that when trying to get "service", it's best to simply go into jerk mode right from the start.
George Carlin said it best...
At one time in my life, I thought I understood the meaning of the word "service." The act of doing things for other people.
Then I heard the terms:
Internal Revenue Service
Postal Service
Civil Service
Service Stations
Customer Service
City/County Public Service
And I became confused about the word "service." This is not what I thought "service" meant.
Then one day, I overheard two farmers talking, and one of them mentioned that he was having a bull service a few of his cows.
WHAM!! It all came into perspective! Now I understand what all those "service" agencies are doing to us.
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.
This will only work well for Comcast if it detects swearing after the call is terminated:
Auto System: Attempting to connect your call.
Auto System: Please wait.
Auto System: Please wait.
Auto System: Please wait.
Auto System: All operators are currently busy. Please call back. Good bye.
FUCK!
Back when I was working phone support, I used to delight in telling those assholes that they needed to format their hard drives. A system like this would have greatly improved my job satisfaction and performance numbers, since every call would have been an FFR (Fdisk-Format-Reinstall.) Not gonna bust my ass if the customer's a dick...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Shouldn't the need for this tell companies that real people want to talk other real people when they use the phone?
One problem is that people are becoming more passive-aggressive and non-confrontational. Part of the whole corporate customer-support business model is based around making it as inconvenient as possible to seek help. Gone are the days when a support 800 number was available, much less obvious.
Admittedly, people are getting dumber and have shorter attention spans than ever, and the new customer support business model exploits that by making it very difficult to get help. Customers are treated with apathy and disrespect from the moment they make contact nowadays.
The only way to fight back is to FIGHT BACK.
I hate to say it, but every time I've not censored my opinion on an issue, I get things resolved.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Always ask for the person's name you're speaking with - immediately. This puts them on the defensive and makes them behave a little better.
2. In most cases, you should NEVER deal with tier-one support. Immediately ask to be "escalated" - the first tiers are morons whose main job is to make you feel guilty you called in the first place and get you off the line ASAP.
3. Still having problems? Contact the PRESIDENT of the company or the highest accessible executive. You will be AMAZED how quickly you can get a problem resolved. A friend of mine had a billing problem with a local ISP/telco. He sat outside the president's office -- until he came out and was forced to field my friend's issue. The President assigned a special assistant to my friend to deal with the problem and made it go away fast. I'm sure the President said to his assistant, "Do whatever you have to do, but I don't want to see these people again." - and it worked!
I also like to remind them that hell hath no fury like a pissed off customer, that you'll write letters, put up a web page, or other things. In the past, I got a $17,000 settlement against a company after I put up a web page addressing the problems I had. While some companies don't give a damn, others do, and in several circumstances I've made it clear that if they don't resolve my problem, I'll shout about it from the rooftops and it'll cost them a thousand times my loss in bad PR for them.
Speaking of problems, I recently got ripped off from a company called Big Impressions out of Arkansas. I highly recommend you avoid these sleazebags.
customers start using the anger detection to get a rep because no one really likes talking to a machine, i can relate. so now, in an effort to keep your service on track, you add a few more people to handle the increased call volume because more people are getting to talk with a person... fair enough.
so, my question is, why not hire more support staff and simplify your menu options to "for sales and billing press 1, for all other requests press 2"? i mean you're going to be pushing more calls to staff anyway, why not get more staff and give the customer what they want?
scott king
Back when I was a Sprint PCS swatter, Sprint rolled out their voice-recognition menu system for customer support. Since I had to call frequently on behalf of existing customers, I quickly found out the best way to get a live operator -- just say "cancel service". The system would play back a "please wait for the next representative" message that sounded a little bit depressed about the bad news, and bump the call to the top of the queue.
Classifying everyone as either 'jerk' or 'polite' is a gross oversimplification. The truth is that complaining is a fine art, and there are ways to use this art to get what you want without being a jerk.
The reason why the polite person can be overlooked is because there is no pressing need for attention. If there's a severed thumb in your soup and you sit politely and wait for the waiter to return, you aren't going to get particularly prompt service. If you scream, someone will be over to help you rather quickly. The key is to make your displeasure known in such a way that will get immediate attention but will not seem unreasonable to random bystanders. This has the added impact of public opinion - if a potential customer sees a poor effort to resolve a reasonable problem, that person could choose to do business elsewhere.
As an example, I once hated doing business with UPS. Since I have no choice but to pick up packages at the local customer counter after the first delivery attempt, I got to deal with the UPS automated phone system rather frequently. It was such a poorly implemented piece of equine excrement that a simple 'will call' request could take 15 minutes (wading through menus, entering tracking numbers multiple times, then explaining everything to a human being, who would once again request the tracking number and your name, address, phone number, etc.). I inquired about having packages automatically held for pickup after the first delivery attempt (USPS, FedEx, and Airborne all do this to some extent, and FedEx and Airborne even have same day pickup), but I was told repeatedly that this could not be done. After calmly expressing my irritation in person at the rather crowded customer counter, my packages started being held for pickup automatically and I received friendly, personalized service at the customer counter.
They have since stopped allowing automatic holding, but delivery change requests can now be processed quickly and painlessly on the web. Now that those incompetent morons in charge of the USPS have cut back my local post office's hours so much that there is no way I can go there during the week, and with FedEx closing down the office that I drive past every day and moving operations to one that is conveniently located a half hour drive through back roads from where I live (in the opposite direction of where I work), UPS has become my favorite carrier.
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.
"Socialization is f***ing hard. Let's go f***ing shopping."
I wanted to return a lot of PCS phones that were bad (no analog). I worked for an IV pharmacy that delivered to peoples homes, many of them in very rural areas of Missouri, Illinois & Iowa. So having analog work on all of our phones was extremely important to us.
I had already delt with Sprints runaround (No, I do NOT have 3 frickin' weeks to get my phones replaced!) so I decided to call Samsung. No matter what option I pressed I could not get to a real live person. In disgust, I eventually gave up after an hour solid of messing with it. The next morning I called investor relations (which had already closed when I made my earlier call) and asked to speak to the president. Lo and behold, a half hour later he did call me back.
"You do know that no matter what option you press you can't get to a real live person?" CEO: "No, there should be an option..." Me:"Let's try it!" I punched another line, dialed the number and let him have at it. He couldn't get to a real live person either. You could hear him suppressing his desire to cuss. He appologized & then said "I've never had to use the phone system, when I want to get ahold of someone I have my assistant place the call and connect me when they get through..." Must be nice.
After explaining what our business did -- I had my half dozen crates of replacement phones in less than 6 hours from the time that call ended and they were already activated for me. All of them worked flawlessly as well.
If you can't get to billing, try investor relations for getting a real live person.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
With initial tryouts scheduled to take place at Parris Island, SC., right?
Do people reading Wired really need waveforms explained to them as "wiggly things"?? Are they really that dumb? :)
Your wait time is.... thirty....five.... minutes...
I hate this #$%* Service!!!
Agressive Level detecting, confirmed, level 8. Initiating Kenny G's Greatest Hits, Loop = 2
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
I am so going to rip you b**** off that your scank of a s*** girl is going to (bleeP) on her (bleep) and then (bleepin) (bleep) (bleepoid).
....click....
Booga ya dooga mig na toot!
Tech: "How may I help you?"
Me: "Where's the ANY key?"
Tech: (Booya dubba hooba eagh!)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.