Re: I should'a known better!

AEF wrote:
patrick jankowiak wrote:
JF Mezei wrote:

William Webb wrote:

It was so utterly maddening that as long as the old system was in
place as a backup to the VRU, I used to say "Rumplestiltskin" as a
menu choice to force it to drop down into the old Touch-tone system.



I had a system repeatedly tell me that I wasn't pronouncing my name
right !!!!

I really do not understand why corporations are paying for such voice
response software/hardware when customers despise them.

Because they think it's "cool". The executives are thinking, "Look! Our
computers can understand speech! It's like talking to a real human."
Yeah.


How many times have we dealt with this. Trying to convince "management"
that just because something *can* be done doesn't mean it should. Too
often a losing battle.

Back in March I was shopping for a new bank since I had just moved. I
tried the Wachovia ATM and it talked to me in a loud voice! Very
annoying. The result was that it took a lot longer to use it and I
don't want other customers waiting in line listening in! I made my
displeasure known to the branch manager and left.


Speaking/Voice response ATM machine is one of the stupidest tech
misapplications I've heard of. I mean, that's wrong in too many ways to
count.


Interestingly, United airlines seems to respond to the command "human"
to transfer to an agent (but does not respond to "agent").

http://gethuman.com/

Hewlett-Packard
800-474-6836
Say "agent" at each prompt.

Patrick


You need to be on a secure link to reach a real "agent". I've suspected
that companies that were hard to reach and difficult to do business
with were really just fronts for.... wait, what's that whirling
sound.... and what are those dark shapes coming across my lawn???
:-)

Cool. I'll try these tricks next call! (including the Rumplestiltskin
trick way above)

Here's my recent story:

I've had some problems recently with Verizon DSL. Thursday night it
didn't work. Upon attempting to connect I got "Error 629, port was
disconnected by remote machine." I tried their diagnostic program which
told me my modem was dead. Tech support agreed but said it could be the
cable. Went out to get a new cable, but that didn't work. Friday (while
at work) I ordered a new modem. When I got home from work, everything
was working fine! There was nothing wrong with the modem after all. It
was a Verizon DSL outage. So now I have to cancel my modem order on
Monday!

Also: After things were working, I tried Verizon's diagnostic program
again and it STILL said the modem was bad! I asked one of their tech
guys what gives and he said it's just a program to give information. Uh
huh.
AUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The phone calls themselves always start out with the annoying
voice-response crap. And in one call I had to give my DSL phone number
3 times. Isn't the first time enough? Don't computers talk to each
other nowadays? ;-) And wouldn't it make sense to display the phone
number on the human's computer monitor?

Nothing destroys customer confidence in a high tech company like a
screwed up support system. The second time I'm asked for my account
number, I say that I gave it to the last person (or I keyed it in at
the request of the answering automaton), and ask what they're looking
at on their computer screen.

Often, they actually have your account in front of them and are simply
verifying it. Dumb procedure. Good procedure is to ask something else,
like your name and/or address, and to say "to verify your account,
please give me your name & address" or such.

Sometimes the second (or subsequent) person hasn't received anything.
That is a screwed up system.

If I've given a problem description to one person and get tranfered to
another, I always ask the new person to tell me what they know about
why I'm calling. Their answer to that question tells you quite a bit
about their support system.


You really just want to start
with a human, of course. Except sometimes the human isn't that good
either!


Our area just went through a broadband cable system upgrade and it took
weeks before the company would admit they were having problems. Calls
to support yielded only instructions to "reboot everything". I don't
know if it was support not understanding the problem or the upgrade
people not giving support the facts.


Technology can't make up for stupidity.


Or, as the old saw goes: The trouble with making something idiot-proof
it that pretty soon idiots will start using it.

.

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