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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..."
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.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Problem is, for some companies, once you connect to a human, all you get is someone reading off a flow chart.
I wish customer service wasn't dead....
It only applies to those in the US. Maybe others should start working on lists for their own countries...
for a poke in the eye with a sharp stick press 2
for another menu of annoying options, press 9.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Then again, maybe I'm the exception
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.
I see 57005 people
I think I read somewhere that on some voice menu systems, a swear word will get you connected to a human. I definitely tried it once, and it did indeed work.
Now if only they had a way to get to a human that wasn't in a call centre in India...
A return to some mythical golden age when you could call customer service and a highly qualified person would pick up the phone and solve your problem instantly, for no charge, is NOT going to happen, for reasons that should be obvious.
I don't mind automated systems, most of the time. Given the choice between waiting 10 minutes for a human to take my call, and an automated system instantly picking up, I'll take the latter. 90 percent of the time, the automated system is perfectly adequate, and a lot of times, it's better.
What I *hate* is when the system tries to hide the fact that human customer service is available. A little while ago, I needed to have FedEx recall a shipment I sent. This was not something I could do via the automated system, but the system didn't tell me how to reach an operator, nor did anything on FedEx's Web site that I could see. After fumbling around the system for 10 minutes or so, a thought occurred to me: "Hey, what happens if I hit '0'?"
This worked. A disaster was averted. Would it have killed FedEx to make it clear this choice is available?
Left, Up, Left, Left, A, B, Y, Select, Start
Get out of spelling pergatory... Get an automated spell checker already! =)
Throughout 2003 and 2004 I had a cellphone account with AT&T Wireless here in Seattle.
Everytime my bill would show up with more charges than I expected (i.e. every month) I'd call the 800 number and would have to listen to many many many minutes of a woman with a croaky "I'm so up-beat and busy I'm losing my voice" voice talk about all the really great services that AT&T Wireless had to offer, all put to some jangly disgusting up-beat "boy band" pop soundtrack.
They used the same voice and music for almost two years and I swear it nearly drove me insane.
The problem was there was no way to avoid having to listen to croaky becuase you had to listen attentively for a human to pick up the call and feebly attempt to fix the problem.
Sometimes I'd have to listen to this stuff for 20 or thirty minutes at a time.
There is a happy ending however. AT&T Wireless got bought by Cingular and the croaky voice, and music, have gone forever because all the bugs with my bill seem to have been fixed so I don't have to call anymore.
Thank you to whoever fixed my bill.
the best way to get through to a human is to call their toll free number. They're not so interested in keeping me on hold when they're paying for it.
Not true. The cost of long distance service is very cheap:
Even if the company pays 5 cents per minute (which is very high) for toll-free service, the cost to keep someone on hold is 60 x 0.05 = $3.00 per hour. Most tech support monkeys in the US make more than that. And if you're paying 3 cents per minute, the cost is $1.80 per hour.
Tech support costs less overseas, but I don't know how much.
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.
I have some issues with my broadband provider from time to time and have to call tech support. The automated message has me enter in my account number before having me directed to the correct operator. At that point the guy (or girl) at the other end asks me for my account number. It drives me nuts. I have found a few short cuts to get to an operator now and use them, but for a while I was entering in random numbers and it seemed to have no effect. Why implement such a system?
Are there any lists like this for the UK?
Rant enabled:
There is nothing I hate more than being redirected to a call centre in India or somesuch to someone who can barely understand what I say and I can barely understand what they say.
This is especially more important when i'm wanting to query a company on something complex that cannot be answered by them reading out an answer from a list of questions and answers. The moment you ask them a question that's not on their list it's headbanging against wall time as you hope to be transferred to someone in the English speaking world.
I'm not against call centres, infact curiously enough I recently got redirected to one in the USA (it may have been Canada) recently and they were able to get the answers I needed. I just hate the ones where I get redirected to a non-native English speaking country where they're reading from a script essentially.
I think the truly aggravating thing about this is that often you're on a phone line that's costing you (or the company you work for) money and the company you're calling are profiting from the call, it's actually in their best interests to get you on the line waiting longer.
NPR's Morning Edition did a story on this guy yesterday (listen linky). They had a few on air examples of this, then also had some interns do some more tests. They said average time to get an operator was something like 56 seconds from the time they dialed. Good stuff to know...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
This works best when customers clearly identify themselves to the IVR on the way in. It changes dynamically however when a customer simply "pounds zero" or makes other attempts to avoid the recognition system, by making them the lowest possible priority, lengthening their overall wait time.
I saw this yesterday during the afternoon hours. KCAL 9 News has a streaming video story (night time) about this. Flash is required.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Use on of those business directories, and then phone the Head guy of Custom Services directly, in his office. Just as he's about to leave. Then speak polity but firmly, with authority, don't question that you are on his private line and simply demand what you want to be done. Works a treat. Be the king.
I recently had to use SBC's automatic phone menu system and was very pleasantly surprised. The voice recognition has gotten pretty good - it had no problem with my accent. I managed to pay my bill over the phone quickly and efficiently without ever talking to a real person. I really didn't need to, and I am sure it would have been slower if I did.
So, such systems aren't universally bad. The only thing they need is the option to talk to a live person and any given point in the menu. That would make the customers feel secure and calm - sufficiently so that they don't necessarily use it always.
Or was that something else.
Meh.
One of the biggest lies of this century has to be:
Your call is important to us.....
If that really were so companies wouldn't have fired 2/3rds of their staff and got a flippin' computer.
Keep track of the ones that screen your call into areas away from their profit centers. If you get no luck with their customer service dont be afraid to call their sales desk etc... You're still talking to people responsible to the company word of honour and if you bug them enough they may actually help.
If your call is really important to them they will appreciate the extra efforts you go through to bring it to their attention.
good luck
I don't understand why all customer support systems don't employ some sort of call back mechanism. You have employees sitting at their desks, waiting for calls to come in, but inevitably there are more calls in the queue than employees so the customer is the one doing all the waiting. Why not do it the opposite way? Customer calls tech support, goes through a few basic questions to direct them to the right department if neccessary, then they enter their phone number and hang up. Their phone number goes into the queue and the CSR operator, instead of answering the next incoming call, calls the next customer in the queue! Customer doesn't have to be tied to the phone listening to musak, company doesn't have tens/hundreds of callers on hold at any given time putting load on their phone lines etc., CSR doesn't have his phone ringing off the hook -- they call you when they are ready to handle the next call. It's so simple, why isn't this more common?
While I agree that the menu-maze phone system can really suck, sometimes getting a human on the other end to redirect your call can be bad too. I've ended up in multiple call-transfer hell where I get forwarded endlessly to different parts of the company because no one even had any idea who could answer my question. New operators that drop your call are fun too after you've been on hold for 20 minutes.
In a few cases, I even prefer the menu system, for straight forward queries that I just need to provide a meter reading, or get a list of transactions. Once I know the menu route, it's quicker than dealing with a human.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
They'd move it to the front of the queue.
If they cared, would their system go something like this?
To use our superfantastic automated system press one now. Otherwise, press two or stay one the line and someone will answer shortly.
And for those humans who get calls, listen to what is asked of you and respond to that, not what you want to respond to.
I hate it when I ask if X is in, only to be transferred to their extension which gets me to their voicemail which I then hang up on because I need to know if they are in.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/85937
Tings - a nanowrimo 2005 CC BY-SA novel in progress
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
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.
What's this customer service thing I keep hearing about?
None of the secret phrases was "xyzzy"
If enough people bypass these phone systems, maybe the big companies will finally get a clue and start providing real customer service again..."
Unfortunately it is not quite that simple. I work as tech support on IVR products, and I can tell you that what this is suggesting is really just an arms race. The big companies are more than anxious to get you out of the IVR and to a real person if that's what you need. They are simply trying to avoid wasting valuable human resources as switchboard operators and dumb terminals. The problem is that, as any emerging technology, the wrinkles are still getting ironed out.
I am perfectly aware that IVRs are not new technology, but the more advanced CTI along with TTS and ASR capabilities that are growing up are making it so that it should actually be easier to get the action or info that we need more quickly. As this matures although these companies do track "0-outs" and abandons as metrics of the success of their IVR systems, they are also tracking full callflow, and they are certainly willing to listen to suggestions or even all-out complaints if they can use the data to improve service, reduce wait times (think "trunk") and more effectively use their people.
Don't just 0 out - complain!
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Hello, you have reached the Springfield police department. If you know the number of the crime being commited, press it now!
[Bart presses randomly]
You have chosen "regicide"! If you know the name of the king or queen being assinated, press 1!
You can't take the sky from me...
I had a hilarious experience calling an insurance company in Canada once. They had one of those voice recognition systems, and I spent at least 15 minutes searching through every menu, trying to find what I wanted, or even a choice to speak to a representative. Some menus I couldn't back out of, and I had to hang up twice to return to the main menu.
:)
The third time I finally got too frustrated and started swearing as soon as the computer answered. The voice paused for a few seconds, then said "Ok, a representative, one moment please."
I thought it was a brilliant idea. Recognize when the customer is getting pissed off and then get him to a human ASAP.
Well, the company is not going to care until the 5 human operators start to process account cancelation requests non-stop. Then they will either go under or open a big customer service call center in Bay Area (where else can you find people who speak without an accent but can understand every one else perfectly?).
I always genuinely need to interact with a human being. It's the company's job to know their product and mine to just use it. I am going to explain what I want in natural language and THEY can figure out which department it belongs to and what's my account number.
Pergatory?
Well that lady who called me the "F"-word because she wanted something I couldn't give her (I don't make the rules) must have some serious bones sticking out of her.
Maybe it's not "the bones" but the fact that modern manners has gone into the toilet, and we all are too busy making excuses for it to set things right?
Pergatory? There's another obviously horrid mistake in the blurb, which was supposedly edited by a human. [Did the editing get outsourced or something? No can't be india... I guess none of it is actually done.]
And that is one reason I am starting to dislike "customer service". You get lots of utterly ignorant people, and the ones that can't read or write are often the ones that can't understand the spoken word. "I can't help you right now, I will have to ask my supervisor to look at your situation and call you back in the morning" Conversation should be OVER, save a few niceties. Quit arguing with me, it's just killing my stats. I can't help you, bitch/fuckwit.
So I just imagine the pain of those in their organizational silos, getting people that insisted on talking to the wrong person. It's their job performance that suffers- all the stats for incoming and outgoing calls are recorded. The more out calls, and the longer the calls, the more likely you are to get canned. Plus, I get to have a person on hold while I'm on hold with another department. WTF? Misery insists on having company to listen to elevator music.
If you're pissed off about a phone menu, don't make the reps suffer. Tell them politely, or better yet, write a letter about it. Take your business elsewhere if you hear of better service.
But for the love of #random deity# just press the buttons and be nice to the rep.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
A DSL ISP I used to work for would ask customers to enter their DSL phone number, and that was the first thing we'd ask for when answering the phone as well. Why? Because more often than not, the software to automatically pop up their account info didn't work. Why? Because the company spent bajillions of dollars contracting somebody the CEO played golf with (or something) to build the software, and it would have cost bajillions more to get them to fix it.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Why would companies abandon phone trees? They save the companies so much money by reducing the number of people they have to hire to answer phones (of course, this is also why rural or overseas call centers are popular). If customers get fed up and just go online (which is the first thing companies like SBC urge you to do when you connect) or give up seeking support altogether, they save even more money. It's only if significant numbers of people get fed up and stop buying their products that they would have to change. Now, government agencies (at least the ones that let us call them) never have enough money, so they'd probably always have phone trees.
Oh, and the US seems to be one of the few countries in the world where 24/7 phone lines (or 6am-10pm, or something similar) seem to be what customers expect (vs 9-5 Monday-Friday). I'm sure US companies would love to reduce the number of hours. If we consumers only expected service during those hours, then maybe they could use the savings to hire more employees to answer the phones. Or, they may give us just as bad service, less often.
In the UK, at least, the voicemail systems don't assume you have a tonedial phone (there are still plenty of pulse dialers around). So they always start by asking you to press # or something. If you don't press anything, most of them will drop you straight through to a voice operator.
The automated message has me enter in my account number before having me directed to the correct operator. At that point the guy (or girl) at the other end asks me for my account number. It drives me nuts....Why implement such a system?
The phone system might have been set up for software that doesn't exist anymore or is not used in all locations. I worked for a company where this happened. The phone system asked you for the phone number on the account and then I asked them for the same thing. When the company decides to outsource support, sometimes the systems they have set up to automatically transfer that info to the answering agent does not work. They also sometimes change accounting software and break compatability. Many times the bureaucracy of the company keeps the loose ends from being tied up. So the system continues to ask for account info when nobody uses it because they don't want to hassle with changing the phone system.
Also, some automated systems will tell the customer if they are in an outage or not if they recognise the customer as being in an effected area from their account information. This cuts down on reps getting 50 phone calls where all they say is "you're in an outage, we're working on it".
Hello! Thank you for calling.
If you are obsessive-compulsive press 1 repeatedly
If you are co-dependant, please ask someone else to press 2 for you
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 & 6
If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want, please stay on the line
so we can trace your call and persecute you.
If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mothership.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are a manic depressive, press whichever number you like, no-one will answer you.
If you are dyslexic, press 69696969696969696969696.
If you have amnesia, press 8, followed by your date of birth, your social security number, home phone number, the square root of 1,555,666,777,888 and your tax code followed by the atomic number for Uranium.
If you have post traumatic stress disorder, slowly and carefully press 000.
If you have BI-polar disorder, please leave a message after the beep, or before the beep, for god's sake wait for the beep.
If you are suffering from short-term memory loss, please press 9.
If you are suffering from short-term memory loss, please press 9.
If you are suffering from short-term memory loss, please press 9.
If you are suffering from short-term memory loss, please press 9.
If you are suffering from short-term memory loss, please press 9.
If you have low self esteem, go away, no one can be bothered to talk to you anyway.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.