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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.""
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?
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.
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..
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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."
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.
Cutting costs: That's what I meant by "to do that without having to hire a real person to answer FAQs?"
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.
(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
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).
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.
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.
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.