People have been complaining for years about customer service phone systems plagued with long menus of "Press 1 for this. Press 2 for that. Press 3 for the other. Press 4 if you want me to repeat this menu in Pig Latin. Press 5 for gibberish. Press 6 to hear all words pronounced backwards..." Well, it seems that at last the technological powers that be have gotten together to create something that will make us all stop complaining: Voice Response Systems.
Voice response systems are those happy creations designed to ask you to say what you'd like to do and then the computer inside the phone system will misinterpret your request and reroute your call to a random company that doesn't actually handle the types of problems you're calling in reference to. The overall goal seems to be similar to that of the number pressing systems, however: Avoid transfer to an actual, live person at any cost. Generally this goal is achieved simply by getting you lost in a maze of twisty voice prompts (all different) in the hope that you will eventually grow frustrated and hang up.
The voice prompt system has one benefit over the number pressing system that is clearly behind the switch. It has no zero key. The joy in number pressing systems was that you could blithely pound zero over and over until such time as they finally transferred you to a person just to get you to stop pressing zero. In the voice prompt system, they choose a random secret word like Zlartibartifast as the key that switches you to a real person and make all other words (you know, useful phrases like "Operator", "Representative", "Just connect me to a human you piece of...") return the very polite reply of "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Did you want to donate your kidney to science?"
If you speak slowly and clearly like an automaton you have a small chance of getting the system to do what you need it to do. However, I wonder what it's like for those with strong regional accents or folks who speak English as their second language and still carry the accent of their native tongue. What do they do with a Midwesterner asking "aboot" their policy, a Texan reporting a "far", or a South Carolinian needing directions to a "heel" that they want to climb? Actually, I'm pretty sure I know what they do...
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Please say 'Goodbye' so we can end this call and move on to frustrating our other customers."
1 day ago
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Did you want to donate your kidney to science?"
ReplyDeleteOh, aren't you funny?! ;-)
Well I try :)
ReplyDeleteI like the hybrids. You know, the ones that are smarter than just buttons, but not smart enough for real speech.
ReplyDelete"For directions to our website, press or say, '1'."
"Enter or say your 16-digit account number, followed by the pound sign." (For that one, I'm tempted to key in the account number and then say "the pound sign," but never remember to do it while I'm actually on the phone...)