Voice nonrecognition

[unixronin]

It's not so much the strip, as the footnote.  Computer voice recognition is so bad that whenever I find myself talking to a robotic voice-recognition menu system, I immediately just start repeating "Just give me a human" until it gives up and forwards me to a human.  If I'm calling one of several potential sources for something, and I hit a voice-recognition menu system, I'll hang up immediately and try the next supplier.

Companies and government agencies deploy computer voice-recognition menu systems because they're convinced it'll save them money and let them reduce the number of humans they're paying.  But at the current state of the art, what it mostly does is lose them customers who are sick and tired of dealing with artifical stupids, and frustrate and enrage the people who don't have a choice about whether to use the AS.

Comments

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

So the American Airlines frequent flyer reservations number asks you a few questions before sending you to a human -- domestic vs international and your frequent flyer number, so you get routed to the right department. It works pretty well.

But the frequent flyer number recognition system works GREAT. Specifically, it understands the phonetic alphabet, so you can tell it "two seven lima november six five three" and it gets it. This is about plus eleventy million (of course it's a much simpler problem than ad-hoc recognition).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Someone was thinking. :)