Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 ****
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"
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
(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.
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.