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System Recognizes Emotions In People's Voices
cylonlover writes "Automated telephone services may get slightly less annoying thanks to research being carried out at Spain's Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Universidad de Granada. A team of scientists from those institutions has created a computer system that is able to recognize the emotional state of a person speaking to it, so that it can alter its behavior to make things less stressful."
Caller: Oh it's another damn machine.
IVR: Do not take that tone, please, sir or madam.
Caller: WHAT tone?
IVR: Please remain calm, and speak clearly.
Caller: I AM CALM, DAMN IT!!!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
just have the system scan for curse words. easier than detecting emotion, and probably more accurate to determine when people are hating the IVR.
I was trying to call Comcast once because the evidently cancelled my automatic billing and were now going to disconnect my internet service. When I called and the automated menu hell prompts started, I said "billing" The system replied "Sorry, I didn't get that" I let out an exasperated "Fuck". The system responded "I understand you want to talk to Billing, if this is correct, press 1" Pretty damn cool.
Given the widespread availability of the Internet, the telephone is really quite a useless device now, especially for business purposes.
When dealing with any business or institution, it is often much easier and much more effective to use a web app of some sort. These kind of apps work perfectly fine for most people, and they avoid a lot of the confusion and annoyance that can happen when having to use a telephone-based system. In the remote chance that the user needs to deal with a live person in realtime, there are many chat systems available that work just fine.
Spoken communication is a relic of the past. It is usually no faster than using a web app or other written communication, and most of the time is much slower and much more prone to inaccuracies creeping in. In the vast majority of cases, the phone shouldn't even be an option. If it is, it should merely be the last resort.
If that were accurate, those giant call centers that companies employ in addition to their websites would go largely unused. Turns out, lots of folks prefer to talk to someone. Just because you don't does not mean that it's a "relic of the past". While I like to do business on the web, I will most definitely avoid shopping with a company if I can't find telephone contact information easily. Web stuff works great when things are going smoothly, but typically the moment you have a hiccup in the standard process, you need to get someone on the phone to fix it. IVRU's are just a way to waste your time while waiting to be helped, so I see this effort as a mostly empty gesture. As GP said, why not start out with the less stressful option in the first place.
Try gethuman.com. It doesn't always have the company you need to call listed but has helped me deal with companies that ... forget to make sure yo have an easy way to get though the menu.
I intentionally do business with companies that don't employ long, painful, circular IVR. I simply won't do business with a site that doesn't have a phone number.
As you said, the web is great if you're trying to buy something. Beyond that, web interaction is mostly garbage. Many companies don't provide direct email support anymore. If they do, it usually takes 3 days to hear back because email is a nice... leisurely... game... of... ping... pong... that... they... answer... when... it's... convenient... for... them.
Those horrible IVR's are used to deflect you back to the web. Not because their web resources are better than their people, but because humans on the phone are an expensive and time consuming resource they don't want you to use.
So it really is a place to separate yourself from the rest. If I call your number and actually get a person that can fix problems, you're head and shoulders above your competition.