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..."

Comments

IVR Guide

[fembots]

If enough people bypass these phone systems, maybe the big companies will finally get a clue and start providing real customer service again

Or, big companies will simply introduce more sophisticated system. I think people get carried away and forget who is still behind and in control of the system.

And I do believe companies do want to provide real customer service, this whole phone system thing is merely herding clueless customers to designated areas, it's not going (and unable) to answer questions anyway, you will eventually talk to a human being.

Moreover, some companies already have their own IVR guide, for example a bank here, this is something to be encouraged.

Re:IVR Guide

[ReverendHoss]

"Or, big companies will simply introduce more sophisticated system. I think people get carried away and forget who is still behind and in control of the system."

Unfortunately, there's a ceiling on how advanced the systems can get. If things seem to be getting completely FUBARed, there has to be a choice made on what the default is. If the input completely flies in the face of what the program is expecting, the system designer has to make a choice as to how he handles the customer. Short of a call system capable of passing a Turing test, he can either A) drop the call and say "I'm sorry, the system can't figure out what you are doing. Tough. *click*" or B) pass the call on to a human who can intelligently handle the situation. I'm willing to bet in 99% of the situations where five '0' presses result in five "I'm sorry, that's not a valid option" replies, and the sixth connects to an agent, it's the system playing it safe.

Random button smashing usually denotes a fed-up, pissed off customer, and that's the last kind of customer you want the system to simply give up on.

Not all evil

[lurch84]

Generally speaking, yes automated tech support systems suck. I've used a few though that didn't actually try to solve my problem, but rather just wanted to figure out what my problem was so it could send it off to the appropriate branch of tech support. The voice recognition ones worked especially well in that purpose. And in cases like these if your problem falls into one of those hard-to-classify areas, the system dishes you off to a representative right away, rather than having to go through 4 levels of menus just to hit '0'.

Then again, maybe I'm the exception

Sure thing...

[CapnGrunge]

First, PHBs will always consider tech support an expense. so they will easily cheap out and exploit the most out of the least IT monkeys. Been there :)

Voice menu cuts expenses. In addition, tech monkeys will probably not have to guide step by step the granny that doesn't know how to configure her outlook.

Now there are customers that will happily hang you on line for hours just so their problem be solved quickly; don't even think of telling the customer that the problem is somewhere else.

As long as terms and limits of service are established and understood by both parties, you'll get poor service and support jobs will always be underpaid.

Great

[opusman]

Now if only they had a way to get to a human that wasn't in a call centre in India...

FedEx

[Gray Elf]

Oddly enough swearing at the voice recognition software also helps. Telling the system at FedEx to "Give me a Damn person," will drop you a customer representative. And it feels good.

Re:UK numbers?

[Grey_14]

As someone who works in a callcenter (In Canada, not india), I can tell you it's NOT usually in their best interests to keep you on hold, Most places are rated on their volume of call's, Not the time of them, in fact it's considered bad to have a long call time. though yes, I have heard a lot of complaints about indian call centers, ("Oh thank god you speak american!"), Also there are a lot of people just reading scripts, and a lot of people who actually know what they are doing, it's hit or miss.

The Cost of Clueless Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that IVR systems are very frustrating, but I work for a company that makes it's living driving out the costs of clueless humans answering telephone calls from clueless customers. More interestingly, perhaps, I work in third-level support for my company...

The cost of having one clueless human talk to another is enormous. The cost of having a well educated and knowledgeable employee who can directly deal with said clueless caller's problems is even higher.

In fact, let's face it, if you are a highly knowledgeable employee, doing support work is not the most desireable job in the world. Who wants to deal with whiny clueless end-user's problems all day? You would have to pay a premium salary to keep these people from moving to more interesting jobs.

Are you willing to pay (a lot) more for convenient customer support? Conversely, are you willing to talk to someone from India (or whereever), who could be more knowledgeable and more able to deal with your problems, at a lower cost, albeit with a sometimes difficult accent and/or attitude?

Another option is charging people who insist on having their problem solved immediately, and allowing others, who are willing to state their problem and wait for someone to get back to them, a less expensive service.

As a previous poster mentioned, IVR systems at least allow calls to be organized and routed to knowledgeable individuals to facilitate cost efficiency. Computers can answer and route calls far more cheaply (if the system is designed well) than people can. That's why the phone company charges you for operator assisted calls.

Product and Customer Support is expensive, especially for complex hardware and software systems. Perhaps every piece of software and hardware could come with two different prices: A higher one that entitles the user to convenient, high quality customer service, for a limited period, and another that provides a cheaper product but with a lower quality of customer service. This might serve to set the customer's expectations better than the current one-price-fits-all approach.