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Get Out of Voice Menu Pergatory
renx99 writes "I don't know about you, but I hate calling tech support, and the worst if the wait. Paul English felt the same way and has put together a list of shortcuts on how to get to a human quickly. If enough people bypass these phone systems, maybe the big companies will finally get a clue and start providing real customer service again..."
I work in the call center business and some things I'd like to point out.
:)
1 - When an IVR tells you to speak your choices but doesn't say you can also punch them in, most of the times you actually can punch those in. In fact, on some IVRs what happens is that a speech block is matched and then translated into a keystroke and the program proceeds.
2 - IVR programming is mega bucks. People spend millions of dollars, analyzing call center efficiency, developing IVR applications, developing CTI routing strategies and developing desktop applications (in_house/standard CRM packages and so on and CTI enabled desktop apps).
Most IVR apps that we encounter are seemingly 2-3 level deeps menus with a good 5-6 options that we can hear. In reality, some of these applications contains thousands of IVR pages, a page being a menu choice of a voice playback that you hear. Some of these IVR applications take months to develop and months to test. It is normal for a customer to initiate a project in January and be going live with an IVR application in December. It's a lot of work.
3 - Speech recognition mostly happens today using Nuance, BBN, and Speechworks products. IBM and MS speech recognitions engines are not used for such applications. A lot of times the choice is limited depending on what IVR platform is used. Many times there are corporate standards or partnerships or loyalty to one platform and it forces all newly acquired and other owned entities to switch to the same platform. This also causes millions of dollars worth of business to call center service providers.
4 - Some business people who decide on the menu items and the layout for the IVR, actually allow barge-thru (speak while IVR is speaking or press a number). These people also allow you to zero out and hit the operator. They will even allow customers to say operator or agent anywhere and be thrown out of the IVR and into the agent queue immediately. Sometimes, they will try to convince you to pick a choice but if you insist on pressing 0 they will connect you thru.
People on the other end of the spectrum will force you to listen to everything and anything they can imagine. They will not allow zero'ing out. These people don't mind dropping the call if the customer doesn't get with the program.
There's people in the middle of this spectrum also.
Sometimes, federal/state/local law requires that certains anouncements must be played or certain conversations must be recorded or blah blah. Sometimes, it is applicable to one kind of business and not all. So it gets complicated.
Some IVRs as part of the OS, will just crash out and route you to a default queue if you keep pressing 0 like there's no tomorrow. But you may end up at the wrong queue and be put back in the correct queue.