Slashdot Mirror
Do Kiosks and IVRs Threaten Human Interaction?
DavidGilbert99 writes "According to research by the Hyatt Hotel group, one third of customers are already checking in at self-service kiosks in their hotel lobbies, eschewing the traditional route of the receptionist. This is indicative of a wider trend according to voice recognition experts Nuance who believe we simply never want to talk to a real human again, preferring the clipped, efficient tones of its Nina virtual assistant. Expanding this from mobile to now include the web means we could soon be living in a world where speaking to a real live human is the exception rather than the rule." When things go smoothly, I prefer the automated versions of many things (airport check-in, ordering products to arrive by mail, depositing a check); it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
I just want to check-in faster. I don't care if it's with a person or a kiosk. And if you charge me to talk to a real human, I'll use the machine.
It seems 90% of the time I can't use the IVR since for that kind of thing I would have used the web page, which means I am now stuck trying to get a human which is getting harder and harder. I suspect that this is intentional, the longer you have to play around with the IVR the shorter the queue wait times are in the call center.
Place item in bagging area how about place a real person at the check out.
Just make sure the complaints department has plenty of them. I do not want to talk to a machine.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is a difference between interacting with an average human and interaction with someone getting paid minimum wage. There's no value added by the later.
On two recent trips I had drastically different experiences. Front desk clerk at a cheaper hotel took 25 minutes to check in the three people in our group. We asked about simple things like which of the three restaurants next to the hotel was better and he couldn't even tell us what restaurants were next to the hotel. The second was at a much nicer hotel. The person behind the counter was clearly paid more, smiled, and was very nice. It took them all of about 10 minutes to get all four rooms of the group checked in, including changing floors for one of them. They also made some great recommendations for food.
What people want is value added. I'd never check in via a kiosk for the second hotel, but I'd be very glad to check in via a kiosk at the first. Not wanting interaction with idiots isn't the same as not wanting interaction with people.
If I'm at a counter and the person behind the counter is just reading things off a screen to me, what's the point? If the person adds nothing to the transaction, what I really should be talking to them about is what they are going to do after their job is eliminated.
1/3 of the Hyatt's guests are tech savvy introverts who have figured out that they can lessen stress inducing interactions. The other 2/3s are either extroverts or introverts who haven't figured out how to use the kiosks.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If I want to talk to someone, I will.
If I want to get something done, unless said "something" is to speak to someone, I want to get it done - whether or not interaction with others is required.
Remember: you are not special.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Yes, I don't want to speak to a human. Humans are rude and unhelpful, and they don't need to give me askance looks when they see all the weird stuff that I'm buying at the drugstore.
But I don't want to speak to a computer either, because I don't like repeating myself. Just let me push buttons.
When I talk to one of the machines over the phone, they usually give me a list of options, none of which relate to my problem. I have no problem starting with a machine, but PLEASE, give me a way to get to a human when the machine doesn't cut it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
slide credit card and/or enter a few numbers to identify yourself
answer a question or two about checked luggage
grab your ticket/key
most times you talk to a person their computer system is some ancient software where the person has to type in war and peace to get the same thing done
How many times recently have you tried to call say a cell phone or cable company only to go through the decision tree hierachy that does not give are you an option your need, but you don't find that out until you are 3 or 4 levels down on the tree and you have already invested 10 minutes and then r put in a wait queue for another 20 just to find out you are in the wrong place. That design may save on some human salaries but at the cost of many very pissed off clients.
I think most people would like to talk with a person that can understand what you need and help. We certainly don't have a technology yet that allows a machine to take that place.
There also seems to be the effect if not the intent to limit access to only certain problems or complaints which you can do by design with an automation but not a person. So limited access for complaints is the other problem.
"Coffee with milk and no sugar"
"That will be three dollars"
"thanks"
OMG! The meaningful interactions I will miss! What am I going to miss out on? Meaningless protocol driven exchanges? The occasional moments where protocol breaks and customer and server have a brief moment of human interaction? Frankly, if it bothers you to lose these minute interactions, then you have bigger issues.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Well, this seems mildly interesting to me. The peasants actually prefer to have less service? The peasants actually prefer to constantly learn new systems that force them, like cattle in a race, to follow a predetermined path to increasing the corporation's profits? Silly peasants, don't you realize that you are working for the corporations, for free?
I'm not fooled by false hopes of time savings or fantasies of cost savings by doing the minimum wage labor myself. Thanks all the same. I prefer full service, where someone else has to master the system and do my bidding before receiving my payment.
If your hotel check-in is faster at a DIY kiosk than by a professional front desk manager, you're at the wrong hotel. When I stay at Hyatt properties, the front desk handles my check-in, payment transaction and baggage handling. Should they choose to discontinue that in favor of a DIY kiosk, I will take my business elsewhere.
Now, before you type up a heated retort, I am well aware that Hyatt will not miss my individual patronage and will happily trade it for the DIY profits form the unwashed masses. But, I remain unwilling to compromise, and there are lots of alternatives to Hyatt. And in the places where those alternatives don;t presently exist, new businesses will spring up to serve my needs, even if it is at a premium.
I have no problem paying for decent/exceptional service. I'm uninterested in paying or the "privilege" of doing the work myself. I I want that, I'll go to a motel, but even they staff the front desk.
Enjoy your "savings", peasants!
"Not Sure" - Idiocracy.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
While the overly-aggressive push to IVRs in areas where they are clearly too immature to be viable is a rather annoying penny-pinching move, it hardly seems like most of the situations being described are really the sort of 'human interaction' that we want to hold on to.
Interacting with the poor bastard getting paid not-enough to push whatever paper is connected to my situation isn't all that pleasant. I hate to think how it is for the CSR, whose reward for finishing with me is yet another customer...
It is certainly possible for technology to be isolating(or, perhaps more accurately, quietly ease somebody into isolating themselves); but if your quota of 'human interaction' is currently with people slated for replacement with voice recognition and expert systems, I have some bad news about how isolated you already are.
Do humans threaten computer interaction ?
Maybe a kiosk at a hotel is fine, but self-checkout at the grocery store is usually a pain in the neck. More often than not there is some sort of problem, even when scanning normal items, so you end up needing the help of a person to clear the error anyway. Of course the person who does this also attends to a register, so they have to wait until the people in their lane have been helped first before they can help you, so it ends up taking longer than if I just went straight to the human cashier.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Is it just Hyatt's and other similarly priced hotels that have the kiosks? I'm an introverted traveler that has never seen a check-in kiosk. Does the kiosk spit out the room key?
I always like talking to an actual human better. I spend enough time dealing with (or building) automatic systems. And I know how much they suck. The machine at the airport NEVER recognize my passport. Voice system NEVER recognize my foreign accent. Systems ALWAYS assume you know why you are there or the proper term for what you are trying to do or the procedure.
Look, there's no question running "Jack In The Box" cash registers employs more people than building Red Box video stores, but the fast food joints that have robot cashiers can reduce their prices. Partially to make up for the fact that there aren't any pimply faced teenagers who can afford to buy a Ford Motors vehicle. So the former cash register jockeys have to go to college and eat $.45 tacos because the extra $.045 cents are needed to pay the captive market prices of textbook publishers. These pimple faced brats have no money for entertainment after paying $.90/2 tacos and $450 for a text book, so instead of watching Django Unchained in theaters with the rest of us plantation owners, they have to download it from the Internets creating demand for Fiber Optic infrastructure. They eventually graduate college, invent a robotic pharmacist, and buy a "Jack In The Box" franchise.
Total impact:
-My tacos are 10% cheaper
-congress finally investigates college text book prices
-I don't have to deal with pimple faced teenagers to order tacos
-The MPAA loses money
-Google Fiber
-Cheaper prescription pills just in time for the baby boomer retirement
Most importantly, a new "Jack in The Box" location puts up a help wanted add for someone to cook more tacos to feed all the people who just saved money on their cholesterol medication. This person's job will be way better because he doesn't have to interact with me acting like a bitchy customer to make a living, but he will continue to mope around like Dante Hicks in Clerks until his coworker gets fired, goes to school, and invents the "Auto-taco 9000". At that point, he'll either try to get a student loan, or if he's mentally disabled he might loiter around outside his local city hall with a bunch of other people in sleeping bags eating cheap tacos and watching Iron Man 3 on their cell phones.
That assumes the Federal Reserve prints enough money and congress stops acting fucktarded. If they squeeze the money supply hard enough, the "Auto-taco 9000" may never get the small business grant it so desperately deserves. Randal Graves will have to turn to Kickstarter & Crowdfunding to get his chance to feed customers wayward rodents.
The Federal Reserve & Congress must act to ensure that America stays competitive with third world countries in the "feeding rodent meat to tourists" department! If they don't, we may all soon be buying "100% Rodent-Free" tacos from illegal immigrants out of the back of a van.
Push more sheep through, lower/eliminate labor cost.
Your interests are of precisely zero importance in the decision to implement kiosks. But, it's adorable that they've got you believing that kiosks are for your benefit.
Your naivete is like a new born kitten. Adorable!
Rant mode on: I work on laboratory equipment for a university. I spend a lot of my time and frustration on the phone with the companies who make scientific gear. Breaking out of canned menus and hold only works sometimes and often just results in voicemail sans returned calls or email.
Yes, for the 14th time this call, I did know that you have a web site.
If the answer I needed was on the web site, I would have gotten it there.
If I wanted to order a new machine, I would've dialed sales directly. You make that easy.
If my user wanted to drop N thousand dollars to have your tech come out three times again to fix a simple problem, they wouldn't have come to me out of frustration
I want tech support so I can ask a technical question that YOU (the company) removed the manual that had the answer from your web site.
And when we drop half a million on a machine, I expect better than some lame voice menu system with only a very few highly overworked tech support types on the other end.
(There. I feel better. But only till I get in another phone runaround with the instrument makers. Don't let me get started about them dropping support and parts for instruments after as short a time as possible.)
I so prefer working with people behind the counter (as probably does everyone who has some modicum of social skills). Automation is rules based. But if you're pleasant to the people behind the counter, in general they will go out of their way to make sure you have a good experience, even if they have to bend the rules a bit.
I can't stand talking to humans, for basic day-to-day stuff. I don't have any great desire to answer how I'm doing or hear how other people are doing, or comment on how the weather is or what some rich guys did playing with a ball. I just want to get on with my day and not be distracted from the voices inside my head.
I drank what? -- Socrates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun
"The book focuses on the unusual traditions and culture of Solarian society. The planet has a rigidly controlled population of twenty thousand, and robots outnumber humans ten thousand to one. People are strictly taught from birth to despise personal contact. They live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Communication is done via holographic telepresence (called viewing, as opposed to in-person seeing)".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I will continue to prefer a human with whom I can attempt an upgrade for a gratuity. A machine gives you no leeway.
The Machine Stops
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
What was possible the most prophetic movie of the 20th century nailed this one.
Erwin: "Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you prefer an automated response, press one, now."
For routine stuff, the automated systems are usually faster and smoother. When I know what to expect, have everything ready and don't have anything exceptional to deal with, I much prefer to punch a few buttons on a machine and be done with it. When I want a human being involved is when the exceptions pop up: there's a problem, or I don't know exactly what to expect or what I need, or I have something that's not part of the normal flow that needs dealt with. That's when I want to take it to a human being who can exercise some judgement or explain to me what's going on. And ideally having the automated systems handling the routine stuff should improve things by freeing up the human reps to concentrate only on those exception cases.
The above, though, is probably why people prefer the machines: all too often the human reps can't apply any discretion or can't explain what's needed. Policies don't allow them any leeway, and hiring and training policies select against actually understanding what's happening. Given the choice between the machine and a human drone who can't do anything except follow the book, most people will go with the machine that'll get it over with quicker.
Any company that gets you to a human fast is likely only doing that so they can give you a sales pitch. I'd rather have a screen I can just click on "no". It wastes less of my time that way.
I don't want to wait in a line if I have a simple transaction - like checking into a hotel or printing tickets. Faster line to the kiosk, faster service by the kiosk, (usually) no confusion on the part of the computer. I like to have the opportunity to do things for myself, before having to rely on another person - often, this is not possible. Complex problems require human intervention. Computer errors too. And customer service by a computer exacerbates problems, because it is perceived as insincere and says, "we don't care about you and we aren't going to waste our time on you". Human workers will always be necessary - but in declining numbers, as machines become increasingly efficient and capable of performing complex tasks that could only have been done by a human before.
And for as fun/cool/effective as technology is, Slashdot readers are innovating their own demise.
If people in general didn't want to talk to other human beings, most of our planets population wouldn't be crammed into tiny areas ridiculously over crowded of land, better known as villages, towns and cities.
What people don't want is to deal with the lip of the teenage prick behind the counter who thinks his shit doesn't stink and that you're an asshole because you didn't realize that your 6 pack of soda counts as 6 different items so you now have 21 items in the 20 items or less line.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Wouldn't this be more of a Western culture issue? Many parts of the world value the human interaction much more that Western, industrialized cultures, especially the American culture, which is off the end of the chart with its task oriented nature. This is NOT America bashing. Our culture is what you want when you want to get task done in the shortest time possible. We are good at business and getting projects done. Other cultures are not nearly as concerned with "git 'er done", if it sacrifices human interaction.
Would other cultures prefer the kiosks?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm sick and tired of automatic systems that say "please be sure to listen to all of the following options as our menu has been changed". As a rule, they never give you a date when the menu has been changed, so this statement seems to typically be a lie used as an excuse to convince people to listen to the options every time.
The problem with human interaction in much of the service industry today is that most of the corporate employees we have to interact with are so dis-empowered, they really are just robots... they act according to very limited scripts with neither real knowledge about the systems of which they are part nor any real decision making power. So they are just robots with the additional defect that they execute their programs imperfectly because they human and even have hurt feelings when you swear at them because of their incapacity to actually help you. This is frustrating for the customer and dehumanizing for the employee. So better real robots than fake (human) robots, right? Just so long as they understand "let me talk to a human"...
(And then there's the small problem of all the low-end jobs we're eliminating, etc, etc, but hey, progress is progress.)
faster? automated checkouts have speed limiters in the software that you don't have with the stations with store cashiers.
my personal experience is that voice recognition systems are slow. buggy and practically never give me the options I actually want. As a Brit living in the USA I cant tell you how annoying it is that I have to put on a very exaggerated nasally American accent to make those things even understand me.
Besides, I nearly always end up eventually talking to a real person anyway so IMHO they are just a total waste of cellphone and life minutes.
The supermarket self checkout systems are a model of how automated kiosks can work and make things a little more humane.
Typically they have one person monitoring and helping people for 6 machines. If it's done well that person engages each person pro-actively to make sure they are getting what they want and the process goes smoothly and is watching to make sure nobody is gaming the system. That last thing is the real reason the person is there and so helpful, but because of that the process is much smoother and *more* personable. Contrast that with the typical human supermarket checkout. The cashier is scanning the items as quickly as possible looking down at the groceries and the screens. The customer is staring at the card swiper and entering a pin or loyalty card number. The only time they make eye contact is when there's cash back or handing over the receipt.
It appears that an automated replacement for the barrista has already been developed.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wow! Where do I have to go to find the stores where they actually enforce that maximum number of items rule? I'm the guy with 6 things and a $20 bill waiting behind the person with 25 items and a malfunctioning debit card. The kids at this store where I often buy groceries have told me they're not supposed to give the customers a hard time even if they're over the limit.
it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
My experience is that when things go wrong the LAST person you want to have to deal with is an under-trained, demotivated human who just wants you and your problem to go away. They'll tell you whatever gets you out of their way and woe betide anyone who rocks up to their counter within 5 minutes of going-home time.
Give me a computer every time.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When I get somewhere Im tired. Im brain dead. I want a shower and a drink. I would rather step up to a desk, hand someone my passport and let them take care of everything. Just tell me what the room number is and hand me the card key. I've checked into dozens of airports and hundreds of hotels around the world.
More human interlocutors available for technophobes and lonely old people. Less friction in most transactions for most people. Immense relief for aspies. Less stress for call center monkeys. Everybody wins. I'm really looking forward to the day where I can restrict my human-to-human interactions to meaningful, personal stuff.
I deal with IVR's day-in and day-out at my current 9-5.
By "deal with," I of course mean "try and find the workaround to get to a real person as quickly as possible, before the goddamn automated system causes me to drive this handset through the wall, repeatedly."
No, I don't think we have to worry about automated systems threatening human interaction anytime soon.
Smartphones, on the other hand...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Looking at it negatively is one way to look at things; it'll stop human interactions, bla bla bla. The other way of looking at it is that with all these new automations, it'll free up people from menial tasks and give them more time to spend with people they would actually like to spend time with.
Ordering a product remotely? Mostly prefer web based over talking to a person. (Especially if said person has an accent I cannot understand.)
Checking in to airport or hotel? Prefer human. Most of the time I waste a bunch of time with the machines only to have some field it won't accept and I end up at a human anyway. I've had phone based menus do the same. After pressing a bunch of numbers progressing through the system, then getting told "Goodbye" and it hangs up on me without ever getting what I want, I get pretty annoyed. Fortunately, most systems accept pressing 0 at the start and directs you to a person.
Anecdotal: It seems that when humans are eliminated from jobs, the business saves money and the consumer does not. So I'd rather see the people working.
Better to pay for them at work, than pay for them on welfare.
I'll take the bate.
How quaint indeed. I find this whole notion of people still using checks as means to transfer money unbelivable. Having checks still as *the* way to pay for anything and not something from Victorian age London you go to a museum to wonder about. Weird. I really can't understand, how it is possible, for a technologically highly advanced country to not be able to switch to something other form of payment.
Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you prefer an automated response, press one, now.
Long after ATMS could hand most physical money transactions and online banking about everything else. Maybe I visit a physical branch once a year at most. But I still see plenty of people in them on Saturdays.
A long time ago I arrived at 2:00am, much delayed in Austin, TX. The Hertz counter was empty so I rang the buzzer. A guy came from the back, looked out the door, held up one finger and disappeared. He returned shortly with a Lone Star longneck and put it on the counter in front of me saying "You look like you need this. Now let's get you in a car." And back then in TX I could drive with an open bottle.
When will a machine be able to do that? Or maybe when will a machine be ALLOWED to do that?
Kiosks and all the drive-through windows help create a fat society and drive up unemployment.
I don't use them at all if I can help it.
Occasionally there are situations where there simply is no other option- the train station near me, for example.
But I would rather stand in line for a few minutes at the store than support the replacement of people with machines when so many people NEED jobs.
Everywhere in the US, more and more low-end jobs are being phased out and being replaced by self-service or bots.
But instead of transitioning our society to celebrate and support folks having more time for themselves and (horrors!) caring for their families, or being free to pursue intellectual and artisitic creation, this self-same society increasingly looks down on the great unwashed. We think they are lazy scum for not desiring to be an asshole robber baron, or not wanting to join in on the American Dream of six-figure debts - most of it ironically incurred from the higher education that is supposed to bring the Good Life.
You lost your living wage to a robot? Tough shit; get two minimum wage, zero-benefit jobs to make up for it. The puritain work ethic, so beutifully advocated by Ebenezer Scrooge thrives still in 21st century America.
This is part of what Roddenberry was expressing in Star Trek; a golden age of exploration and discovery instead of the old, savage ways of hunter-gatherer greed.
Nuance who believe we simply never want to talk to a real human again, preferring the clipped, efficient tones of its Nina virtual assistant.
I don't think that's it. I like lilt in a voice. I don't need a human for simple procedures, like checking in to a hotel, as some have noted.
Here's another dimension, though: Dumbness. For things more complicated than a simple checkin, like checking out at the grocery store with produce, or finding out the details of the data plan on a possible cell phone purchase, what I care about is dumbness. I'm looking for the least dumb inteface, which usually goes in this priority order: Smart human, smart computer, average human, average computer, dumb human, dumb computer.
The reason I avoid the human interface is because the corporations are hiring the cheapest idiots they can find, and their computer interfaces are average. So checking out with produce at my local grocery is painful at the computers, but a nightmare with the human. The human -- looking bedraggled from working the night shift at the meth lab -- asking questions like, "What is this?" "It's asparagus." "Is that a fruit or a vegetable?" "Argh. You're a vegetable."
My ideal case, including RoI considerations, is to use an average computer most of the time, and have a token service fee for using a human ($5 or 5%, something on that order) -- but that human should be skilled and have both the knowledge and authority to complete the transaction, answer my questions, etc. I'm thinking they're getting paid $15 - $30/hour, and bringing in $30 - $50/hr in "enhanced service" fees (average including downtime).
Obviously the details would change from context to context, and it doesn't work in all cases (like the Home Depot people wandering the aisles). Where it works, though, it would turn skilled human service people into a profit center instead of a cost center.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Decades ago, when the first bank ATMs were being marketed, bank managers were skeptical. They thought that customers preferred human tellers and thought that "people are not going to walk up to a machine and use it".
The fact that people often prefer automated systems is *not* evidence that people don't like talking to or interacting with other people. It's evidence that people would rather deal with a robot than deal with a human in a stylized, scripted, robotic interaction. Efficiency, lack of fuss, predictablity, just getting it done, etc FTW!
So, yeah. Automation threatens some roles previously done by humans. Editor as troll?
tl;dr It's often preferable to interact with real automation than humans playing robots.
Grocery stores! Even if you self-check out (I don't as the post-scan loading areas are freaking miniscule!), you are handling the same items five times!
1) Select items and place in cart.
2) *Unload* everything to be scanned.
3) *Reload* everything back into the cart for the short trip to:
4) Unload into your car.
5) Drive home, unload one more time and put your crap away.
In this 'day and age', Steps 2 and 3 should not even exist, period!
Are one-third of Hyatt customers are men staying on their own? Could it be that after they check in, a woman arrives, on her own, in very high heeled shoes, and after an hour in his room, she then leaves again, and doesn't stay for breakfast?
They'll just do what Walmart did, increase the limit number. Instead of the 10 items or less line, they have the 20 items or less line. I miss 10 items or less lines.
The acceptance and use of self-service checkins is not evidence that people don't want to talk to other humans. I can speak with some actual professional experience as a call center programmer that people are only interested in the straightest line betwen points A and B. That's it. If that means using self check in - great. If you have a severe problem, resolving that problem would very likely mean speaking with an actual person as quickly and easily as humanly possible - kiosks are not an appropriate mechanism for a complicated issue and a person in need needs an assurance from another human being that their problem has been addressed fully and promptly.
During my high school stint at a grocery store, we were told not to be sticklers for going over the item limit in the express lanes (especially since it's pretty easy to have over 10 or 15 grocery items), but that it was ok to strongly suggest customers with egregiously large orders go elsewhere, as long as you made an actual attempt to direct them to another, non-express, lane.
Typically, though, grocery customers are pretty self-policing; most people don't like to be embarrassed with a huge order with a bunch of people behind in line, judging them. Those that don't care about the people behind them are 1) thankfully far rarer and 2) going to go through the express lane anyway while giving roughly 0 fucks.
In general, I sorta learned there that when providing customer service you can get people to do pretty much anything if you're simply professional, courteous, confident, and genuinely attempt to be helpful (ie, do your job). The vast majority of people will listen to you without making a stink, and the assholes who *do* make a scene are typically just looking for someone to yell at.
LegendMUD
Why the FUCK is there no regulation that contact centers meet certain standards?
1. there must always be a way to get to a human operator when your problem doesn't fit their poorly designed IVR.
2. If you ask me to enter some piece of information, you should get fined for subsequent redundant requests.
3. allow consumers to complain and rate the phone support of an organization and investigate any with a large volume of complaints.
Who do us consumers need to bribe? Maybe we need our own well paid lobbyists?
I am battling with a govt IVR as we speak and I am furious at the level of incompetence in the IVR implementation.
True story: A few years ago I got sick as a dog, running fever, having chills, and relevantly to this story, I had a nasty case of laryngitis. I wasn't just hoarse, I just plain couldn't talk. I called my insurance company to get some information I needed to go to the doctor, and I had one of those damn voice menus. "Please say your social security number!"...
I tried entering it in using touch tones, but it wouldn't work. The damn thing insisted that I say my social security number, and it wouldn't let me talk to anyone until I did. And I tried, too. Oh lord, I did try. I could get enough weird sounds out that a human could probably understand what I was saying, but my voice was breaking up so badly that the IVR couldn't decipher it.
I ended up going to the doctor anyway, and they had someone from the receptionist desk help me out with the insurance stuff because according to that insurance company, if you can't talk, you don't get help.
To this day, I think that any company worth its salt should give you the option of dropping to a human operator to help you. There are just too many things that can go wrong with an IVR, and too many problems that are simply unsolvable via automated response systems.
In case you were wondering. It's telephone menu systems taken to the next level.
The reason I prefer the machine interface, the reason I prefer shopping online, is that machines have manners, don't stink, don't have 5 pounds of metal in their face (well actually they might but it would be required metal), and can hold a simple instruction like "medium coffee with room for cream" for longer than 2 seconds "uhhh...that was a large Americano...?" "no a medium coffee with room for cream".
People can be stupid, unreliable and just plain unpleasant to look at.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
No. No. No.
In the last few years, all the larger stores have installed "self service checkouts", where you scan your goods yourself and pay by inserting cash or card into the machine.
The front of the store has become a cacophony of six automated voices constantly saying "unexpected item in bagging area".
Personally, I avoid these machines at all costs. Even if there is no queue for the machines, I will queue for as long as it takes at the traditional checkout because I place value in the person serving me, and in having a person serve me. I am even prepared to pay [a little] more for my groceries if it means the difference between human interaction or not.
At the airport, it is becoming harder and harder to actually do this, because the airlines are in a race to the bottom in terms of service, as they are competing entirely on price. If you want actual service from an airline these days you need to pay a significant amount more for it.
Thats what I heard 20 years ago: people prefer ATMs to human tellers because the ATMs are friendlier.
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Did the study evaluate the amount of non native speakers visiting the hotel? If you do not speak fluently the receptionist's language, it is much more comfortable to deal with the virtual keyboard of a kiosk.
Ever call AT&T customer service regarding U-Verse? Maybe it's gotten better over the last 4 years but last time I called them:
The first person to answer questioned what phone number I called and refused to believe that I called the number I stated I did, despite the fact I was staring at my Caller ID screen and holding the welcome letter with the phone number listed on it. After 5 minutes of that dispute she finally transferred me to the regional technical support office which told me they were not the correct office to assist and transferred me over to a 3rd person that could only schedule a technician visit. In the end, the technician never arrived and I cancelled the service for a full refund since they never hooked it up in the first place.
By contrast, Pac-Bell at one time had a phone system with which you could schedule a technician visit without needing to speak to a single human being. It gave you the available days and time slots available for you to choose from and their technicians actually showed up (albeit usually late).