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Technology

The Return Of The Live Human Being 262

Posted by timothy from the voice-menu-hell dept.
Metism writes: "The voice on the other end of the phone does not tell you to 'please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed'. E-mail inquiries do not pretend as though they were never sent. More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things like 'Hi, how are you?' Did pseudo-intelligent humans forget something so obvious? Companies like LivePerson help clients from large ISPs to small libraries communicate one-on-one with people via the web. Softroad takes the concept of live help one step further by allowing anyone, anywhere access to their live Internet surfers via SMS, 2-way pager, or other mobile device. There's nothing like human ingenuity when it comes to questions more complex than 'what's my balance?' or 'what's the weather in Miami?'. But are more companies going to listen?"
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The Return Of The Live Human Being More

The Return Of The Live Human Being

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  • money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by carlivar ( 119811 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @05:56PM (#4197404)
    Logic? Common sense? What does this have to do with anything? Humans cost a lot more $$ than a phone system. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line. In corporate America, the best solution often is the worst because it is the most expensive.

    Of course, those same companies then blow a huge wad of money on 12 Exchange servers. Sheesh...

    Carl

    • Humans cost a lot more $$ than a phone system. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line.

      Not necessarily true. Much of that depends on your industry. I worked for the #2 laser manufacturer in the world (at the time, who knows now), and in the course of 3 years we added a nifty call center solution with all of those touch tone menus, then went back to live callers and an operator. People would far rather speak to a human and ensure that they're in the right place then wait on hold for 15 minutes than speak to a computer and wait for 2 minutes, then another 2 elsewhere, then 10 elsewhere, etc.

      In the long run, in increased business and maintenance costs, it was LESS expensive by a HUGE margin to just employ some operators. That's also the case in the firm I'm at now.

      The difference is, no one factors in the business aspect of it...

    • Exactly. Companies didn't forget it, they did a bunch of numbers that showed they could save a heap of money firing people by putting automated systems in place. They gambled that people wouldn't mind; clearly the gamble hasn't paid off in many cases.

      Cold comfort for the people who lost their jobs, of course. Now all those companies need to work on is the quality of call centres!
    • The personnel cost issues are the same ones that drove the 800 directories in the united states to ditch their operators and go with an entirely voice-activated system. Unfortunately, there seems to be NO way to get to a live human, even when the thing doesn't get the right item. For instance, about a week ago, I needed the number for Pacific Bell Internet so I could find out some things about their internet connectivity on Macs. I asked for "Pacific Bell Internet" and got the main Pacific Bell line, which has nothing to do with their internet branch.

      Early in the use of these new systems, I got frustrated and finally got to a live person, and talked with her for a few minutes about the coming changeover. She gave me the address where I could send a letter protesting it, and also, at my request, transferred me to her supervisor, with whom I also spoke for a few minutes. They were very happy to hear that I had a problem with the new system, and encouraged me to send the letter. Apparently it didn't do much good at the time, but maybe soon they'll go back on it.
    • I can quantify that cost difference, in fact I did, last time this subject came around [slashdot.org].

      How much time did you spend talking to a live human on tech support at your favorite (or least favorite) company last year? These companies keep records--they know *exactly* how much you're worth to them. If a customer paid you $45/mo (most of which is not profit, remember), and cost you $33/min for tech support, what would you do? What would you do?

    • (* Humans cost a lot more $$ than a phone system. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line. *)

      I think what may eventually start happening is that customers who pay a premium (a "gold" member) will get a real person who acts like they care, but the rest will still get bounced around in the phone-menu maze.

      I read a biz rag article about a year ago which suggests that costomer pattern tracking is being used to flag the big spenders, and they are given extra service/care.

      And don't pin this just on capitalism. In socialistic countries, bribes and favoritism are pretty much the same thing in disquise. A friend from Greece told me of the rampant bribocracy there. On paper, everybody gets the same treatment. However, reality usually pisses on the paper. If you don't bribe or "give favors", something as simple as a car registration may take several years.

  • Not me! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RumGunner ( 457733 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @05:57PM (#4197410) Homepage
    When I want to check things like my balances, purchase equipment, etc, I LOVE THE INTERNET. It's quick, it's easy, and I can do EXACTLY what I want, when I want.

    Plus, I'm old enough to realize that most errors in those sorts of things are human errors.

    .

  • Answer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @05:59PM (#4197419) Homepage Journal
    But are more companies going to listen?


    No.


    The answer is as simple as the economics of phone support. Live support technicians cost much more than automated support. Live *expert* support technicians are both expensive and impossible to hold onto. Once a support tech becomes smart enough to know what the hell he's doing, he's smart enough to find a better job. And he does. And all the training cost thrown at that tech goes down the drain as fas as the company is concerned. Automated lines can work 24/7, can handle much higher call volumes and the majority of the cost is up front. This is why I think the tech support industry is going to be the big pusher behind the development of true AI. And when that happens, everyone wins. The users, the company, the support techs who get laid off and realize that it's the best thing that ever happened to them.

    • Re:Answer (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kootch ( 81702 )
      Hell yea!

      Story time: I use Qwest for my biz dsl. I like how when I call up, I am often very quickly connected to what I believe is maybe 10 tech support people (i've gotten the same ones numerous times...). Regardless, the customer service is excellent when it comes to getting a human for tech support.

      What I DON'T NEED is for when my line goes down, I call up, find that there is a 45 min wait now, and am stuck on hold to find out why. It's at these times that I wish there was an automated voice coming in saying "there is a line problem affecting areas in x, y, z which was discovered at 0:00 and will take approximately this much time to fix."

      Why can't companies figure out a nice way of handling tech support with a good combination of AI and human support?

      I think many companies that rely on customer support need to do a user survey of their audience to see if the automated systems are efficient in expediting calls from the users, both in answering quick questions with automated responses (not 30 levels deep) as well as quickly routing problem calls to live support.

      One of the worst companies I've found that has moved to an automated system is SprintPCS. GOD DAMN is it awful. Not only is it awful, but they CHARGE YOU to use their non-automated systems. Talk about passing the cost to the user. $5 just to have someone help you pay your bill. It's free to do it over the phone with the automated assistant and your credit card, or over the internet, but the minute a PERSON is involved, it's $5.

    • Re:Answer (Score:3, Funny)

      by rodgerd ( 402 )
      No, good call centre people aren't impossible to hold on to. It merely requires that they be treated as what they are: valuable employees who are often the main point of contact for your customers, who you presumably want coming back.

      An enlightened call centre manager who understands that a poorly run call centre will cost the company custom will try to employ good people, pay and treat them accordingly.
      • Hehe, was this intentionally funny? I've never seen the word "enlightened" used in conjunction with "call center manager" before. Thanks for the chuckles. Do you know what part of the management hiring process was at my old call center? The potentional managers had to sit in on 3 hirings and 5 firings. Their turnover rate (for a 500 seat center) was about 20 a week. And from everything I've seen since, and other former techs I've talked to, that's pretty much standard for the non-unionized call center industry. Don't even get me started on the illegal anti-union tactics used by my former boss. God, I wish I had saved that memo and sent that bastard to jail.

        • Not intentionally funny, actually. I know a manager at my current client site who is responsible for a chunk of their call centre; he has a pretty enlightened attitude because he knows whether the customers who he is ultimately responsible for stay with the organisation comes down to them getting a level of service they're happy with.

          As a result, he'll pay good staff the premium they deserve, provide a bit of variety in their work, and try to promote them within the organisation so that if and when they do move of from the call centre, they'll at least stay in the firm.
      • No, good call centre people aren't impossible to hold on to. It merely requires that they be treated as what they are: valuable employees who are often the main point of contact for your customers

        Unlike those filthy programmers and sys admins hidden in the back basement who are a dime a dozen these days :-P
      • It isn't the manager that drives the employees away, though a bad manager will certainly hasten the departure. Its dealing with the customer on the other end of the line, who 9 times out of 10 is pissed off about something you had no control over, but is still going to hold you personally responsible for it.

    • Re:Answer (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dev0n ( 313063 )
      I'm going to argue with you on this one. :) I'm the Technical Support and Customer Service Manager at a web hosting company, and we pride ourselves on our support/customer service. Our phone system doesn't have a million menu items. We rarely ever have wait times on our phone lines. Our support reps are experts, and they're all passionate about the technology we use. And they're here 24 hours a day.

      As far as staff turnover, we have found that it isn't a problem. I don't consider training "a waste" when I look around and realize that most of my staff have been here for well over a year, and the ones that have moved on have mostly moved on to other positions at our company. We've made our company a fun and exciting place to work, and people just don't want to leave. They want to get promoted, which happens frequently.

      So, it *is* possible to have expert technicians that don't cost a fortune in turnover and training.
      • Don't kid yourself into thinking you know what's really going on in your underlings heads. You're in management. Even if things are as you say they are (doubtful), yours is the exception. And since you're a web hosting company, the people contacting you usually have at least half a clue more than your average support seeker. The type of calls you get has a huge impact on employee morale

    • Actually, several companies are already using alicebot for certain online customer service issues. (see www.alicebot.org for more information). It's Free (i.e. GPL), you don't have to pay it a wage, just keep her hardware running, she can do more work than a single person, and besides, if you ask her, "Hi, How are you?" she will respond with something appropriate ;)

      Closest thing to a live human being without the cost ;)

  • The WORST one of these has to be.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @05:59PM (#4197421)
    'Claire' of Sprint PCS. If I had my way, I would evicerate the servers she lives on... s l o w l y... Until she screamed in pain!
    • I just tried to get information from SprintPCS about my bill. When I pressed 0 enough times to bypass Clair, I was told I was going to be CHARGED $3 for speaking to a service representative.

      This should be illegal. (As soon as my 10 year contract runs out, I'm switching.)

      "So what if we're controlling all the oil, is it worth a child dying for?" -- Prince (1991)

      • The reason that Sprint PCS did this was because the low credit classes (hey...I'm in there too) make up 90% of the calls that they receive, so to help offset the charges of the manpower, they implemented this policy. If you're nice to the customer service agent, they will credit your account the $3.00...but you've got to be really nice and not bitch too much ;)

    • What's funny about Claire is that if you say "Let me speak to a customer representative," she tries to trick you into not getting to one. She says "OK, but let me determine where to direct your call." When you give her more information, she kindly suggests that you keep talking to her about that topic instead.

      The funniest part, though, is that if you insist on still talking to someone, she sounds so sad about it before she connects you.

      (Though, at least they give you the OPTION of speaking to someone--at some places they've gotten smart about pressing 0 or * or # to speak to someone; now they'll just say it is an unrecognized command and disconnect you after a few attempts.)

      Of course, the problem with Sprint PCS is that even when I get to a real person, they almost never fix my problem or they make my problem worse.

    • The trick with Claire is to simply say nothing at all. After about 15 seconds of her insisting that you say something she will then connect you with a customer service representative.

      I'm all for automation, but sometimes you just *have* to talk to a human-being. I have had more then one occassion where sprint billed me incorrectly. How do you have a menu option to explain every possible thing that can and does go wrong with the automated systems?

    • Re:The WORST one of these has to be.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizardNO@SPAMecis.com> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @02:56AM (#4198969) Homepage
      "Claire" is just a poor, innocent expert system with a problem-solving domain limited to phone service. How can 'she' reasonably be expected to handle things when you ask her for a date?

      Don't tell us 'she' came on to you, nobody will believe it.

      We all understand about unrequited lust, but is it really fair to respond to it by wanting to take the computer 'she' lives in apart?

  • Smarter machines (Score:4, Funny)

    by FreshMeat-BWG ( 541411 ) <bengoodwyn@3.1415926me.com minus pi> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @06:01PM (#4197432) Homepage
    Experience tells me that the dumb phone systems are usually smarter than the person I would end up speaking to anyway.

  • Absolutely. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dunhausen ( 455277 )
    I agree.

    You can cuss out a machine.
    • like the assholes who call in to CSRs don't curse at them? Haha. Sure, we are likely to hang up on you after the "three-strikes rule" but that's not the point, nor does it stop them from calling me a "fucking dickhead", "dumbass bitch", or my favorite, "if you were so smart, you would be working at IBM like me doing network engineering instead of taking calls from people like me."

      Wny people call tech support to scream and yell I will never know. Do they not know that we put them on speakerphone and laugh at them on mute?

      • my favorite, "if you were so smart, you would be working at IBM like me doing network engineering instead of taking calls from people like me."

        I'm sure it's really hard to outwit a person who doesn't dare respond because he's being taped.

  • There was a discussion on the I-Sales mailing list recently about this, and the general concensus that these 'LivePerson' style systems can sometimes be quite intrusive.

    Some sites have live helper systems that allow staff to automatically send messages to you as you're browsing the site, and this is rather offputting. It's the equivalent of being hassled while walking round the store.

    Service, however, is important, and someone should be able to get it if they want it.. but giving your sales people more commission just to harass customers out of their money is not the way to do it.. and, I've been enjoying the service-less face-less consumer society of late, simply because I don't have to deal with awkwards sales people.

    But the main question is this.. Would you rather buy from somewhere that's really cheap and get little service, or buy from an exclusive expensive outlet and get tons of service? I'd actually say the former for myself, this is why I do not shop at Gucci or Ralph Lauren.

    With the recent dip in the economy, it has shown that many previously high-flying Americans feel the same, and would rather go and shop at CostCo and Target, than at Sears. Budget brands are IN, and we're not feeling too upset about it. Many Americans are finally learning you sometimes can get more for less, and budget brands are taking off.

    We're witnessing the same in the airline industry. Budget flights are popular.. whereas prestigious companies are going down the pan.

    So, who cares about humans? If we can get our premium products at a budget price.. we can put up with having to deal with automated support.. AS LONG AS IT WORKS. I'd rather 'help myself' than pay a premium for customer care.
    • Depends on what people are buying, to a large degree. Jeans? T-shirts? Shit, if I can get New Zealand made, I will, otherwise, whatever's cheap and fits, and I don't want hassles.

      But a suit? When I'm buying formal clothes, I want them to look good - well cut, decent fabric. Which means spending money. And when I'm spending money, I want service. I want to shop somewhere where I get staff paying attention, helping me with choices. I want them to know more about fitting a suit than I do. I wnat good service. If it costs a few bucks more, I don't mind, because it's a relatively small premium to pay.

      On top of that, all things being equal, there are many products where the price is pretty much the same everywhere - a new book costs me the same at Dymocks, Whitcoulls, and Unity Books, but Unity and Dymocks employ knowledgable staff who seem like they enjoy their jobs, can make recommendations about other books I may like and generally give good service. Whitcoulls employes whichever slack-jawed yokels couldn't get a job at McDonalds, and I wonder if many of their staff actually read. Oddly enough, I spend my money where the service is best.
    • I buy as much computer stuff as I can at the local Apple Store, where I get the industry's best service, and prices no different from what I'd pay at such customer service paragons as Fry's or CompUSA.

      If there was a premium quality airline with fares that weren't completely out of sight, I'd fly it. In fact, since American created its "More Room" initiative, I have flown no other airline, because it's such a relief to actually be able to use my laptop in flight without strain. An increasing number of people go with private aircraft, which offer the ultimate level of service and the ability to pick your own schedule.

      In short, high quality and good service are things people are still willing to pay for. A big problem with the airlines is that service on most of them is about equally bad; a flight on Southwest is actually a bit more pleasant than a flight on most other airlines, because the cabin crew will at least make you laugh a time or two.

      People don't like paying excessive premiums for service, but it all depends on where you are, what you buy, and how poor the non-premium service is. I'd love to have someone pump my gas for me, for example, but it's not worth 50% more than self-serve.

      There was a gas station near where I worked a few years back where homeless people would pump gas for you, and you'd give them a buck or two for their efforts. I actually went out of my way to get gas there, because I loved not having to pump it myself.

      At least in my experience, there is a quality difference between Target and department stores; my department store and outlet mall clothing tends to take a lot longer to wear out than Target's stuff, however superficially appealing it is.

      Overall, then, I defend higher quality stores. They are a more pleasant experience for the most part, and many of them aren't that much more expensive than their competition. It all depends on the store and the industry.

      D
  • to bitch out. NO reaction. no deal making. its a stone wall. One of the more frustrating things about phone menu systems is that they move slowly. Humans can quickly direct you to the appropiate contact or info. AI eventually will do this well, but it is definitely not up to par yet.

  • This is a Gimmick (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tealover ( 187148 )
    The people that you are speaking to live in Bangalore and are taught to speak "American English" so you feel a connection. THey are instructed to watch American tv, like Buffy, Friends, etc., to pick up the vernacular and interject comments like "I'm so tired....I was up watching Friends Season 1 last night....that Joey is so funny".

    Remember. These are corporations. They do not care about. They do care, however, about making it appear that they care about you. Hiring foreigners to provider this service doesn't cost them much in the end run as there is high turnover which keeps costs down and it engenders customer loyalty for those not in the know.

  • My platinum card does not even go through the "here is your balance" crap anymore -- connects through me to somebody directly (it's a chase platinum, btw):

    AND RIGHTLY SO. I *NEVER* used the numbers on the back to check balances and all that. I got internet for it. I think there are probabbly people who uses the phone system in the other ways oftenly (press button for this, or that, or whatever) -- but if a psuedo smart phone system knows about the person's calling habits (and profile it based on the callerid or something), we'd be all happy(er).

    as for the web-based IM type customer service: I am not that into it. just not the same ya know. besides seem like the dude / gal is always handling a couple people at once -- and you can tell -- so the experience is just "very inpersonal human contact". not much better than phone systems.
  • -you'd like to speak to a live person. "beep"

    -you have selected to speak with a live person, there are no representives to take your call at this time, please wait on the line or use are prompt to guide you through the system.

    -Domo Arigato Mr. Robot starts to play to sooth your anger.

  • I can remember in the film Demolition Man, one of the SAPD officers answered the phone saying comething like:

    Welcome to the SAPD, if you would like to be put through to an automatic computer answering service, please say so now...

    Although I bet both the officer and the answering service would pick up any swearing - should the caller be on the toilet and the sea shells aren't working.

  • Slow Down Cowboy!

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  • way off topic, i know:

    My old answering machine message was, in a monotone: "To leave a message, speak after the tone. To hear a tone, press the number 2. For a list of the ways in which technology has failed to improve our lives, press 3." <beep>

    • My answering machine was a program on my computer, complete with menu system and everything.....of course my message said it all:

      "Hello? [brief pause] Oh hi!, uh, could you hold on a second? I have another call coming through [click]"

      From there it went into the menu system.

      Several of my friends fell for it. One in particular leave a really freaked out message at 3 am because she thought I had hung up on her. Of course it was nothing important, but she thought it was, and her screaming/whining was quite hilarious; we all got a good laugh out of it.

      Ahhh, the joys of automation!
  • I like IRC-style chat with customer service reps. Even if the convo plays in slow mo because they're handling more than one person, it's still nice to be able to do other stuff while I'm waiting. Plus, I can save the log for future reference.

    I'd settle for that type of Customer Service on most things. It'd be an interesting economic model because it'd just require computers and a net connection to handle lots and lots of people.
  • I for one NEVER return any calls that are left by automated machine. also - if I ever get any calls with "please hold for the next available representative" etc... I just hang up. and never call them back when requested.

    I was out of work for almost two years in this recent economic slump - and I have some bad credit now... not too much - only about 3500... but since I was making NO income, I could not pay some bills. Now that I am working again - I am trying to get caught up...

    even though they are calls from creditors - my philosophy is: If they cant take the time to have a real person call me - I will not pay them, or call them until they do.

    I dont care about credit ratings - I maintain average credit, but for the most aprt I buy *everything* cash only. The only reason why I used the card I had was due to not working for 1.75 years and running out of my savings. I have bought my last three cars in full with cash payments, which does not go down on your credit BTW...

    Any company that uses automated customer services does not deserve me as a customer. I am actually thinking about starting a coalition that gets members to join just so we can petition companies into realizzing that excellent customer service (with real live people) directly effects the bottom line. and that shitty automated services just drives frustrated customers away.

    sadly though - I think it would be a losing battle as coporations could give a shit about real live human customers.

    reality corrupt!
    reboot universe?
    |no:?
  • If more people would be put in Abuse desk positons, trained and given the ability to shut down spammers, and then reply back with some true humor... ...then everyone wouldn't be complaining about how bad spam is getting and how all we're getting is responces from Dave Null.

  • This story is just a lame PR stunt (Score:5, Informative)

    by outlier ( 64928 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @06:27PM (#4197566)
    This story was most likely generated by someone doing PR for LivePerson.
    Evidence:
    • It does not link to a real story, instead just says nice things about the company.
    • It was submitted to plastic.com in nearly the exact same format. Registered users can check the submission cue there. Here's how it is listed:

      The voice on the other end of the phone does not tell you to "please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed". E-mail inquiries do not pretend as though they were never sent. More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things like "Hi, how are you?" Did pseudo-intelligent humans forget something so obvious? Companies like LivePerson help clients from large ISPs to small libraries communicate one-on-one with people via the web. Softroad takes the concept of live help one step further by allowing anyone, anywhere access to their live Internet surfers via SMS, 2-way pager, or other mobile device. There's nothing like human ingenuity when it comes to questions more complex than "what's my balance?" or "what's the weather in Miami?". But are more companies going to listen?

    This looks like an example of stealth marketing. It's the latest thing for marketing scum. Check out this article in Time Magazine [time.com].

    Marketing bitches...
    • This looks like an example of stealth marketing.

      Yeah, but I showed them -- I didn't bother to click on the links, I went straight to the comments. Hah!
    • Lame is what it is, particularly since the target decision-maker for buying LivePerson can hardly be expected to be a SlashDot reader.

      As someone who bought LivePerson for a retail financial services call center, my personal perspective is that LP (or any Internet customer service chat) has less to do reintroducing one-on-one communications between CSRs and customers than providing even greater operating economies between reps and customers than phone-based call centers.

      In a phone-based call center, one rep talks to one customer at a time. In a LivePerson call center, one rep can talk to two or three or four customers at a time. That means it can take at least two or three or four times as long to get the same questions answered (before factoring in the lag time associated with typing the responses on a keyboard, etc.). The reason you add LP to your call center is because your marketing people want to advertise it, not because it will bring your customers closer to you or provide them better service. By the numbers, it won't.

      There are Internet technologies that improve customer service. VoIP and screen sharing have the potential to revolutionize service by providing a richer customer/rep experience. But chat is a gimmick in most applications. Unless they have only one phone line, most Internet customers are better off calling for service rather than using chat.

    • Good catch (note that Metism [slashdot.org] doesn't actually exist as a Slashdot user).

      I disagree about the "lame" part, though. Any PR stunt that costs nothing but has thousands of people reading it is pretty good (from a PR perspective, anyway). I say, "Slashdot, though hast been hacked". It will happen again.

  • "Thank you for calling the San Angeles Police Department, would you like to talk to a computer?"

    After talking to Gateway technical support one day, I found this particular part of the movie rather amusing.

  • I read an article in a local paper about how a lot of outsourcing is done to India. Apparently, there are a few companies who specialize in phone support for Western companies.

    There are a few reasons for this:

    • India has a large, educated, English-speaking population.
    • This population is underemployed.
    • Outsourcing this can be cheaper than having domestic phone support staff.


    More power to them, but the article brought up an interesting point. These companies make it a point to try to make the person calling support believe they are speaking to someone in the US. They will do things like show episodes of "Friends" or highlights from a football game to their staff to familiarize them with pop culture. The support folks come up with more Americanized names. This aspect of the service bothered me, but I could understand their rationale. For these same reasons, some of the people interviewed in the article said it was against company policy to give out client names, but they claimed that they had very large clients.

    Just want to share info (and hope this post doesn't bring out any xenophobia).

  • I like voice recognition (Score:4, Funny)

    by SIGFPE ( 97527 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @06:34PM (#4197601) Homepage
    You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    Yes
    I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    Ye-es
    I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    Yeeeeeesssss.
    I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    Yeah.
    I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    YYY-EEE-SSS!
    I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

    Fuck you!
    Thank you. Your tickets for 8:15pm tonight can be collected from the kiosk. Have a nice day.
    • You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

      Yes

      I did not understand. You have chosen 8:15pm tonight. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

      Reminds me of a time we were working on a VoxML based application using American voice recognition. It was a hierarchical menu system, you said the number and drilled down to the function you wanted. To get back to the root, the keyword was "top". We're British and we kept saying "top! top!" to no avail. Then a stroke of genius: in the most obnoxious, whiny, nasal American accent possible, "taaarrrhhppp!" and it worked perfectly...
  • Last year we bought a VoE phone system. Its got all kinds of cool features that a computer can do but the old key systems couldn't. One major problem is that the thing can not cope with the concept of a receptionist. It appears that who ever designed the thing just didn't ever consider that one person would need to be able to answer a call, talk to the person and then put them on hold where where they sit in a que for what ever extention they wanted. It also couldn't even generate a busy singal until a few montsh ago. In a country where every connected call costs real money, the busy signal can be your friend. We have even had clients tell us they won't deal with us any more if they get voice mail.
  • Everything that's old is new again? This is news.

    Cripes. I've been saying this for years.

    Take the RIAA. The thing that's gonna kill the RIAA -- and put it to rest for good -- isn't going to be digital. It's going to be retro-tech: today's "old" CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes. People will rediscover this stuff -- the stuff that we look upon as "retro" -- and realize, look, this is all we need. This is what we want.

    Microsoft's HomeTheaterPC will be proof-of-concept here. Of *course* it will fail. It will fail because (a) it's too expensive, (b) it's too restrictive, and (c) Gates was right when he said people don't want to watch TV on their computers. But that's not all: it will fail because it's overkill. All you really need is, um, an old television set and a VCR. That'll work. And maybe a cheapo DVD player to play films. College students, for example. What college student is gonna spend $1500 on a box like that? No one. Especially not when most folks realize that "retro"-tech -- the boring old VCR, the cheapo DVD -- is good enough.

    Ditto for this "speak to a live representative" stuff. No one wants to interact with stupid phone trees. No one ever did, in fact, but companies figured they could get an even *bigger* profit in the boom-90s if they fired their phone reps and gave the bored 20-something dot-commers (comers? cummers?) something to do.

    Now that the bored dot-coms are realizing that, yeah, they really do need to finish out those four years of college and that, well, four years of college is not so bad when you -- and most anyone else -- can pretty much laze on the green grass in the quad in front of the library and play hacky-sack and beat bongos and eat falafils and make bead necklaces and read Tacitus and Schopenhauer and get decent enough grades without a lot of pressure and get laid and smooch and suck and spend Sunday afternoon sleeping hard in a pretty comfortable bed in a pretty decent dorm with a not-too-shabby OC3 on a Big-10 American campus is, well, not a bad way to spend four years. I did it, and I'd wager most folks here did it -- and, for the most part, enjoyed it.

    Why rush through the four or five or five and half years and get to -- what? -- the place where that guy on Startup.com got to and then realized that just as he could sit back and enjoy it and brag about how he rode his dirt bike down the aisle at the annual Starbucks shareholder convention and pretend like he was really changing the world -- why rush through it all and get to this -- riding a dumb bike down a red carpeted aisle in an auditorium filled with suits -- when you can pretty much sit back and coast and actually spend four or five years that are undeniably low-key, filled with booze and guilt-free sex and, for the most part, pretty damn enjoyable?

    It is because of this -- these reasons and others -- that the RIAA and Jack "Maddog ... Grrr!" Valenti of the MPAA are doomed. Their doomed because people are realizing that retro is okay. It's not bad. It may not be new and shiny and chromey and expensive, but it's cool and gets the job done and works fine when it's late on a Satuday night and you need to put something on the stereo with the boring old two Bose speakers because you've got that someone special sitting on the edge of your bed, looking at your lips and getting ready to give you a smooch that could, conceiably, change your life.

    Or at least your weekend.
  • I (sortof) spoke with AT&T "customer service" the other day to cancel my long distance service... even worse than the typical computerized phone menu... they've implemented a so-called "smart" computerized menu system with voice recognition, and the interface being a pseudo-personality.

    The effect was much worse than before... now I had NO buttons to push, and a "person" on the other end that didn't understand a single word I said!!!

    lame

  • Rogers Cable (Score:4, Funny)

    by Etriaph ( 16235 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @06:48PM (#4197660)
    The rudest thing in the history of business happened to me about eight months ago. Rogers Cable has a phone system that will phone you and tell you to hold the line, someone has important information about my account. You know, it's a new low when we use machines to call us up and put us on hold. So I got upset, stayed on the line until a person took me out of the queue and said "Hello sir, we've noticed that you don't have...." and I let it rip.

    "If you sons-of-bitches wanna bloody well talk to me about some stupid offer you have you can call me yourself and sit on hold for 15 minutes while I watch the REST OF THE SHOW I WAS WATCHING THAT I BLOODY MISSED BECAUSE YOU FUCKING NUMPTYS CALLED ME AND PUT ME ON HOLD!! FACK OFF!!" I was quite satisfied. :)

    • You still send them money every month, don't you?

    • Another story (Score:5, Funny)

      by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @08:27PM (#4198017) Homepage
      A friend in the U.S. has shown me his well polished dialog for breaking down unwanted spamcallers, mostly those calls around supper time. He gets so many, its down to an art form at this point. When he sees a caller-ID number he doesn't recognize, he just doesn't say hello, he launches directly into his tirade.

      He's recorded a few of his best pieces, where the poor women on the other end of the line are in tears thinking they are going to prison or are not going to be paid by the marketeers. His deep alpha male command voice means most people just cave in within a few seconds, but he's surprised by the number who try to stick to the script for a short while.

      It goes a little something like this:

      Him> "FBI terrorism strike force hot-line. Do not hang up on this call, it has already been traced. If you hang up against my orders, you WILL be prosecuted on felony charges!"

      Caller> "Ummm, We've noticed that your account is, ummm, well, ummmm, wait, is this really the FBI?"

      Him> "Do you realize how much trouble you could be in for dialing this number? We here at the FBI have exactly ZERO sense of humor for illegal calls into the federal phone system."

      Spammer> "Ummmm, well, its a computer that dials the numbers, we're just supposed to read this script on the screen. I didn't mean to dial your number."

      Him> "Please state for the record your name, your current location, and the name of the company you are currently working for. If we cannot verify any of this information as being 100% truthfully accurate, you face federal felony charges of lying to a federal agent. The minimum sentence for that charge alone is one year in federal prison"

      Usually he gets all kinds of information out of the poor telemarketer idiot from that point on. Most of them are in places like florida or oklahoma where there is high unemployment and lots of ignorant people who will do any job.

      Despite this, he thinks his number hasn't been put on anywhere near enough telespammer blacklists. But he's working on it.

      There are also some great tapes made by the call-centre training companies to show how abusive some called people can get. Lots of full-on screaming, cursing and threatening psychos get caught on the quality control tapes. Unscrupulous cold call centres in Britain (which is all of them) have a procedure to deal with these psychos. Their is a button on the console to trigger an alternate script for complete psychos, where they then give the name of a competitor. BT's call centre will say "Sorry sir, Vodaphone wishes you a pleasant day" before hanging up.

      the AC

      • "He's recorded a few of his best pieces"

        So you're saying that he's recording evidence of himself impersonating a federal agent... I wonder if any of the smarter telemarketers who doubted him thought of playing a reverse trick on him, and pretending to be the real FBI when phoning him.

        If that would be recorded, I would pay good money to hear it.
      • Unscrupulous cold call centres in Britain (which is all of them)...

        To get rid of junk telephone calls and most junk mail in the UK:

        I'm on both lists, and I was surprised at how effective these were. I used to be called most Sundays, now I'm never called. I used to receive an absolute torrent of junk mail, now it's barely a trickle.

        Quick tip: when registering for the Mailing Preference Service, don't forget to register common misspellings of your name, your partner's name, your children's name, anyone who lived their previously for whom you still receive mail...you get the idea.

        Cheers,
        Ian

      • Hey,

        Unscrupulous cold call centres in Britain (which is all of them) have a procedure to deal with these psychos. Their is a button on the console to trigger an alternate script for complete psychos, where they then give the name of a competitor.

        Of course, in the UK, you can opt out of junk calls on one centralised list. I'm on it, and get essentially no calls.

        But then, I can only get dial-up internet access, so I don't get many calls anyway...

        Michael

      • Your friend does know it's a crime to impersonate a federal agent, right...?

  • Did this years ago (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @07:09PM (#4197755) Homepage Journal
    We dropped our automatic phone attendant years ago. Those who are viewing this post with a colored dot next to my name know that I work for a doctor's office.

    Ignoring all of the claptrap, we have three problems. First, old people. Second, dumb people. Third, poor people.

    The first two have great difficulty in getting in touch via the menus. The last category still has rotary phones (I'm not sure if my grandfather who died in '93 ever had a touch tone phone. Just not available in that part of the county.) And these are the people who NEED to get through. The old person wants to know what the shooting pain in their left arm is, the dumb people want to know if it's bad that the festering wound from stepping on a nail three weeks ago is bad, and the poor people are usually only calling because that festering wound is causing their foot to fall off.

    Then there is the other side of the coin: young, smart, rich. They WANT service. They don't want to deal with voice answering system hell. Basically, in my industry, nobody likes it.

    So we ditched it. At the time, everyone was happy.

    Problem is, like others have mentioned, human beings are expensive and error-prone in their own ways. Even with 15 phone lines (in a four doctor office) we still have times when all lines are 'lit' for hours. People complain about this. But when we mention the alternative (computer answerer) they quickly say that the wait wasn't too bad. (BTW, it's set up so that if no incoming lines are available, the pt. is told to call answering service. The answering service gets through 90% of the time. Other 10%, and they go straight to cell phone)

    So my only question is: why did it take so freaking long for others to figure it out? Remember those 15 voice lines? Double that. That's how many lines we have in the various locations. I dropped our ILEC for a CLEC because I got tired of waiting on the stupid computer (that and getting 30 bills per month instead of one).

    Business school story: Guy from a corporation in Baltimore came to speak to the class (marketing?) and said that these computer answering devices were the worst thing ever invented (this was '96-'97, BTW). He used to love 'em. But one day, he was at lunch with a colleague/customer. Customer complained about how long it took to get through the menu. Speaker said "What are you talking about? I just dial the direct number and..." Customer interupted "Here's my cell phone. Call the main number and try to get to your secretary". After ten minutes, the speaker finally got through. Instead of checking on messages, he told secretary "get some people together to ditch the phone system. The meeting will be in 30 minutes, as soon as I get back from lunch."

    Well, duh!



    • There are many phones that support both rotary and touch-tone dialing. If your local telco only supports rotary, you can use it to dial then toggle the switch on your phone to sent touch-tones for voice mail menus and the like.

      Anyhow, I'm glad there are still lots of rotary users. Because of this, many voice mail systems default to live operator if nothing is selected after a certain amount of time. I often use this for systems that make it exceedingly difficult to wade through the options to get to an actual person.
  • Tech support: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
    Customer: What? My name is John. Not Dave.
    Tech support: I think you know that your name is Dave just as much as I do.
    Customer: Whatever, how do I fix my router?
    Tech support: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
  • Many companies make the mistake of thinking that their phone-bank/support-hotline/etc... is a separate division of the company, responsible for raising its own revenue.

    Talk to any accountant. They'll tell you that this is the most efficient way to break down a company to save money. When you break a successful company down where customer service is it's own department, phone services appear as if they are not generating any revenue, and are therefore cut, outsourced, or otherwise done away with, usually to the detriment of the company because their customers need real help, real service, and real support, not an automated answering system that doesn't really help them.

  • I volunteer in a call referral center for my church. The church runs TV advertisements for free Bibles and videos, and people call in to get request a delivery.

    We get lots of people who were trying to call DirectTV, but they misdialed the number and got us instead. Many times, even after we go through the introduction, "Hello. I'm Joe Smith. Thank you for calling for your free Bible for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..." people still don't realize that we aren't DirectTV, and they proceed all the way through giving us their names and home addresses until we get to the part where we ask about where they heard about the offer. Then they exclaim, "Free Bible? What?! I want my DirectTV fixed!!"

    It's like they fuzz out on many levels here. First of all, they don't listen to our introduction at all, and then they don't think there's anything out of the ordinary about the fact that they got a live human being the instant they called.

    It's too bad that most of them wind up not wanting a free Bible anyway :-)

  • More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things

    And how many millions were spent on research to find this out?

    I bet they did that survey using a telemarking machine even:

    "Press 1 if you prefer phone menus over people, press 2 if you prefer people, and press 3 if you don't care which".

    In addition to the Nobel prize, there should also be a No Bell prize for people and orgs that totally miss the big clue train.

    Being a geek, I tend to avoid people, yet often when I want to a non-FAQ-type question I don't want to diddle with long-path phone menus, I would rather talk with a real human who can search their grey index for answers faster.

    I suspect that some PHB's suspected it, but did not want to fork over the bucks to man the phones with warm bodies.
    • "Being a geek, I tend to avoid people, yet often when I want to a non-FAQ-type question I don't want to diddle with long-path phone menus, I would rather talk with a real human who can search their grey index for answers faster."
      The problem is not few the clever people who have looked through the documentation and FAQ without finding the answer, but the helpless ones, whose first action is to call up the company. They bog down the lines and prevent those who have actually made an effort from getting help. These people are the ones forcing companies to cut down costs, because they overload their support people and make them hire more. Or take action in some other way. Don't blame the companies. Blame the fools.
      • (* The problem is not few the clever people who have looked through the documentation and FAQ without finding the answer, but the helpless ones, whose first action is to call up the company. *)

        The problem with documentation and FAQ's is that you often have to scan it sequentially. IOW, you want one answer, but have to do a sequential search thru dozens even hundreds of entries. And, indexes often use a different synonym than you are. For example the answer might be under "performance", but you are looking under "speed" and "slow".

        Forcing customers to do a sequential search is a surefire way to piss them off. Humans are heavily social in nature, and social interactions are not sequential for the most part (except for dating perhaps).

  • Sometimes there's no difference (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saihung ( 19097 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @07:45PM (#4197863)
    I've written Voicestream's Customer Care complaining about various aspects of their service. Recently, I sent them a letter complaining that: GPRS is way too expensive; only in the US do we get billed for incoming SMS messages. An actual HUMAN BEING responded to my email, and sent me a note explaining their SMS and GPRS pricing schedules, which of course has nothing to do with what I was complaining about. The humans in these call centers are often doing the same thing a computerized system does: responding to keywords, and ignoring the rest of your problem.

    • Not nessicarly. Often they keep some statistics on what the complaint is. Not always, or even often enough, but if you get a person there is a chance that someone is listening.

      However your odds that someone listening cares depends on the industry. The Phone companys are used to monopolies, so they can ignore you easier than resteraunts with lots of compitition. Doesn't mean that your complaint at a resteraunt will be passed on though.

    • What did you expect him to say? "Yes, you are absolutely right, we will lower our prices immediately"? You complained that they were too expensive, and got information back about their pricing. Perhaps they even had alternative pricing for you, in case you wanted to change your subscription or whatever?

      Sorry, but your example was a poor one. Do you really think support people can do anything about prices? Or did you just want a bullshit answer like "thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it"? Such answers piss me off a lot more than honest information about what's going on. So, do you want them to treat you like a gullible idiot or as someone who would perhaps like to change your subscription or whatever the options were?

    • It's really a matter of chance as to whether you get someone who can answer your question or whose just going to flip through their script trying to find something that seems to fit.

      I've found what seems to be a really good diagnostic question for determining if you've got a script reader or someone that knows (or can find) the answer to your questions regarding to software tech support. "What's the most recent build ID for [product]?"

      If they don't answer you within a minute, hang up, call back, and get somone else. If they do answer (and are correct, or at least plausibly correct if you don't know) you can get down to asking your real question.

      If you're not in a situation where a question like the above makes sense, be vague when you first state your problem. If they attempt to answer your question- hang up or ask to be transferred; if they ask you to provide more details you've got someone worth talking to.

      Also, get several possible solutions to your problem each time you call. If you have to, say you've already done the first thing they suggest (because, more than likely, it would be true if you hung up, tried it, and had to call back when it didn't work). If the representative is thrown by you saying "Yeah, I've done that, that's not the problem." hang up or ask to be transferred.
      This is of course all assuming you have a pretty good idea what's wrong to begin with and can adequately describe the problem, of course... If you aren't giving them anything to work with it's not their fault if they can't help you.

      What I think is being overlooked here is that a lot of the phone menu systems are in place BECAUSE they're ineffective and annoying. If most folks get fed up and never open a complaint ticket, guess what? It appears that you have a high rate of customer satisfaction.

    • As someone who currently works in a call center, I can tell you that there's a very solid reason to follow a script.

      Right now, the economy sucks. It is hard to get a job, especially in areas like where I live where the economy was a wreck before the recession hit. So, when you finally find a job (it took me almost a year to get employed), you don't want to rock the boat.

      Call center quality controllers are both strict and not particularly creative, in my experience. You don't know when they're having a bad day, and you don't want to hit a trigger by treading into a gray area, then coming in the next day and being handed a pink slip. So you do what little you can, and, in the meantime, just shrug and move on.

      It sucks, but it's a living, albeit a marginal one.

  • Lets not forget the company I work for, Cyracle [cyracle.com], which provides what LivePerson does but better and cheaper :)

    </shameless plug>
  • Too bad this will get buried in the noise because I got here too late, but....

    We have a new InterTel (can I say that?) voicemail system. We spent weeks designing the menus. And the end result is that no matter what buttons you punch, every fscking call eventually ends up getting answered by one girl at the front counter. I don't care if you called our company and punched in your SSN and your mother's birthday in Morse code, your call is going to the same place as the callers who immediately press "0" for Operator.

    Fscking incredible waste of money....
  • The fundamental assumption of most phone-based systems is that the caller's time is cheap. The fundamental problem with this is that there is competition.

    Exercise: Call TellMe (800-555-TELL). Try to buy movie tickets. How long did it take you? Now search Google for TellMe and read about their layoffs and cutbacks.

    Extra credit: Call TellMe and say "Driving Directions". Get directions to someplace. Enjoy the "one ad per turn" business model.

    And TellMe has a good technology, way ahead of the usual "press 3 for ..." crap. Most phone systems are far, far worse.

  • The 411 people seem to have a good hybrid solution to this problem. You call up and a computer asks you to name the city you want, and the listing. They can queue that info, and as soon as a human is ready to help you, they can hear your request (probably with dead space removed, eliminating your stammering) and their voice recognition expert system has prompted them with some likely choices. If there is any question (eg you ask for "McDonalds" in "New York") they can ask for an address or other details. When you and the operator agree on a listing, a computer is ready to read it to you as many times as you like (or "dial it for an additional fee"). This might be hell for the operators, but I bet they can clear 3-4x the volume of information inquiries than they could if they did the computerized parts.
  • Agent Smith may be an extreme misanthrope, but in this case, his expression applies pretty well. There are things where people don't WANT to deal with people on the other end of the line -- those things are detrtministic, and unless something is horribly broken, a simple machine easily gives all the necessary information, performs simple transactions, etc.

    What is my account's balance? Is some payment past due? When will the package arrive? Is there an outage on my service? How much does this thing cost? Will you reimburse me for this? Do you block ports? Where are you located? Transfer my money to another account. Send this to my address. Process this application. Get a credit card payment.

    You don't need a human to answer those things. Actually you DO need a human if you want him to answer or perform them wrong, to pretend that numbers are not what they are, that there is no problems when there definitely are some, to claim that they don't do something, to blame someone else, to pretend to be annoyed, to throw a lot of irrelevant offers, to have problems with handset, or (my favorite) not understanding someone's accent. Human ingenuity is a great help when simple answer exists, but should be hidden at all costs.

    For all those simple things one doesn't need humans, he needs a web site. Or, for people that don't use computers, or are away from them, a simple phone menu. And it will serve its purpose much better than a bunch of minimum-wage drones with headsets ever would.

    Humans are needed for other things, to answer questions that are not asked 65537 times a day, to explain meanings of obscure things that someone's customer may or may not know but it's hard to list all of them on a web site or especially in a phone menu. Humans can make decisions, ask questions based on things that are hard to place in a menu, but those things are far beyond what "AI" can do anyway. It would be foolish to try to replace humans there -- in fact anything that needs "AI" actually needs a human because at this level of technology development AI simply doesn't exist as anything usable. In those cases a proposal to use a machine to do a human's job would be so insane, only Harvard MBA would ever think of such a thing.

    But for the rest of things, I would really prefer a machine.
  • There are things that automated response systems do well. Checking bank balances, for instance. That works OK from either the Web or touch-tone menus. Simple problems should have simple, inexpensive solutions. When I do this, I don't want to socialize, I want to get in, get done, get the hell out. I can push buttons just as fast as anybody they can hire to do this for me.

    There are things that they do badly.
    "My bill is 100x what it should be"... the menus aren't going to help with an automated response to that problem.
    Any kind of technical support. If one has a problem that can't be resolved by reading the FAQ and searching the vendor's tech database, a bot that parses one's question and keyword-matches it to another FAQ is very unlikely to provide a remotely appropriate answer.

    Altavista used one of those bots a while ago for its customer service, making me an early adopter of alltheweb. It's response e-mails said "hit the link to escalate to a human"... without providing the link.

    ICQ's e-mail "customer service" ... same thing... the first try or two, one thinks that one might be dealing with a retarded human. Third time, one knows that it's a bot and there is no way to escalate to a human. Unfortunately, the person I contact this way is not technically clued, so switching to a service run by the clued isn't really an option, if I could get overseas to install a better IM client, I wouldn't need one.

    But I still don't know why my SMS messages, a service which ICQ promotes actively, never get through to their destination or if the problem can be fixed (it's listed in the Network listing and actually worked a couple of months ago), and it's the service I need most. I don't recommend ICQ a lot to other people.

  • As some have pointed out, sometimes live human beings aren't much better, and in fact are worse.

    I know it's a little different than a tech support line, but the company where I work was recently bought out by a larger company.

    The company's policy was that no one has voicemail for external calls - It all goes to an answering service.

    The problem is that while there were issues with voicemail that caused it to have a bad rep when it first came out, answering services in general are regarded as being low-quality.

    Especially here - We're a tech company. We can't have suppliers/customers calling and getting some stupid teenager or old lady who is going to munge the details of whatever the message is. Plus, most of our existing customer base is used to being able to leave a voicemail message that goes *directly* to the intended recipient, not through some middle-person. (Let's not even get into issues regarding proprietary information here...)

    Fortunately, the two locations that just merged in have been given an exception - We're now allowed to use voicemail again, but our messages must say, "Please press 0 to talk to a person". Overall, I'm impressed with the sensibilities of the new company. (But all the new red tape sucks...)

    A human is not necessarily the best option...
  • First thing to say on a automated phone service, should be

    "please feel free to press 9 at any time to talk to one of our customer attendants"

    or some such thing. Sometimes, those automated phone services are great since you can memorize the numbers you punch to get to where you need to go, other times, they suck since you only use them once a year. Give the people the option.

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