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

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Nothing to do with voice recognition, but the real problem is that phone trees are stupid in the first place. Putting a voice recognition overlay on top of the underlying phone tree only makes it more stupid.

My company's CEO *hates* these things. His philosophy is that we should answer every single phone call with a human and that human can figure out where to send your call (and this human should be located in the US or UK for the most part, but that is a separate issue).

If you call in and all the Customer Service people are busy, it rolls over to a different group of people until it finds a human to pick up the phone. For instance, the sales line eventually rolls over to the cell phone of the VP of Sales. It is rare that a call ever makes it that far before someone answers it.

Having said all that, the single most annoying thing about having an automated system is how none of the information you tell it makes it to the eventual person you talk to. I can't count the number of times I've told a phone system an account number or something and then had to repeat it to the eventual agent. This is not rocket science and modern phone systems can handle this kind of thing, even across multiple locations. (my kinda crappy little phone system takes care of support/sales being located in Campbell, Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Fresno and the UK just fine).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

My company's CEO *hates* these things. His philosophy is that we should answer every single phone call with a human and that human can figure out where to send your call (and this human should be located in the US or UK for the most part, but that is a separate issue).

I'm 100% behind your CEO on that.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah...he's crazy, but it is very easy to get behind him on this issue.