I'm fed up with automated customer service that treats me like I'm a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w minded person. If I'm calling a company there is a reason for it:

1. I can't find the information I need online (or I need it clarified).
2. I can't complete the transaction I want to complete online.
3. I have a billing dispute that is complex and I don't feel like writing a letter or e-mail (like anyone reads those really).
4. Some inquiry that requires some sort of human reasoning.

I really think most customers don't like how most of the automated systems treat them (and I've blogged about what they're doing to get around them before). I know I don't. What drives me nuts? My top 5:

1. Non-interruptible prompts telling me to go to the website to get my answers (see #1 and #2 above, duh!)
2. Bragging about all the "basic" things you can do on the website (oooh.. see your bill)
3. Reminding me that I really shouldn't hold on the line because their website is available.
4. Suggesting that I can get out of queue, leave a voicemail and get a return call (this doesn't work most of the time, just like email doesn't often work)
5. Prompting me to put me into the right queue then having an operator ask me the same questions the IVR just did (Verizon has been doing this for months, and it's a big pain).

Why not personalize the call (and the on-hold prompts)? The company knows how often I call; they probably know how old I am (or could find out with a quick check of their records); and I they can guess why I'm calling. I'd use their website to set my IVR preferences. Put me in a behavioral demographic and guess how to treat me correctly for crying out loud! Look at when and why I called the last 3 times and guess why I'm calling this time. Don't make me feel like one of the masses and talk down to me!

Comment and let me know what your pet peeves are and I'll compile a best-of list.

Posted by Cory at 04:26 PM | Permalink

How many times have you ran a Checkstyle ruleset against your Java code, investigated a problem line, and then wanted to scream out "but I did it the way it's supposed to be done!" If you're me, the answer is many. Additionally, some of the suggestions Checkstyle makes can leave you scratching your head, depending on how many of the more esoteric rules have been enabled.

One particular rule I have been wrestling with for some time now states, for each public method (paraphrasing here):

"This method must be declared as either abstract, final or have an empty implementation."

It's not immediately clear (unless you wrote this rule) why this is required. But then I discovered this wonderful index, which made it all clear. Using this index, you can lookup each of the generic Checkstyle warnings and see their justification.

So the war is over, Checkstyle and I have made peace now that I can determine the impetus behind its often cryptic warnings.

Posted by Vance at 09:14 AM | Permalink

Intervoice has a pretty cool press release out describing some of the voice applications built by students in a class co-taught by one of their employees at Tufts University. While all of the applications in the release sound pretty creative, I was particularly impressed by one called iRing:

This application leverages the students' patent-pending technology enabling users to call into a speech recognition system, select a song from their iTunes music library and send it, as a ring-tone, to their cell phone or to a friend's. Users can simply say the title of the song they would like to download or they can navigate the system using voice commands such as "get favorites" or "search by genre" to narrow down their song choices.

Were this available as a service on my phone, I'd gladly pay a few dollars to be able to get exactly the ringtone I wanted, whenever I wanted it.

It's a pity there isn't a demo line that people can call into to try these applications out.

Posted by Amy at 05:49 PM | Permalink

BusinessWeek Online recently posted an article on some of the challenges facing the telecommunications industry as they roll out bundled service packages (telephone, internet, television, and sometimes wireless). Of these, the article's author identifies customer treatment as the most important. He writes:

In the past week, I have received six advertisements via text message. They were all from my own provider and all about changing to a plan that is suitable for a chatty teenager or a plan that assumes I make three phone calls a month -- and all on weekends. The fact is -- and my service provider should know this -- none of these plans would suit my needs as a businessman who spends a significant part of his life out of the country. Please understand me as a customer. Make it easy to do business with you, and I will be yours forever.

I couldn't agree more.

The full article is available here.

Posted by Amy at 03:37 PM | Permalink

For companies in the speech industry, it's time to start making plans for the industry's biggest show, SpeechTEK Fall, held every year in New York City. And since the show is in our own backyard, we at Audium always make a point of encouraging all of our employees to make their way there.

Checking out the schedule for this year, I was very pleased to see that Paul English, the man behind the IVR Cheat Sheet, will be appearing as a keynote speaker at the conference.

If Paul English's keynote manages to start a substantive discussion in the industry about how we really should care that the public is by and large entirely lacking in warm and fuzzy feelings towards our product, that would be pretty exciting.

Posted by Amy at 07:00 PM | Permalink

According to an article in the current issue of the Journal of Marketing, the answer is yes.

To quote the abstract:

Do investments in customer satisfaction lead to excess returns? If so, are these returns associated with higher stock market risk? The empirical evidence the authors present in this article suggests that the answer to the first question is yes. Remarkably, however, the answer to the second question is no, suggesting that satisfied customers are economic assets with high returns and low risk.

While customer service isn't the only factor that goes into customer satisfaction, for many industries it's a crucial one. If the data in the article is correct, it should serve as a strong argument in the boardroom for prioritizing investments in technologies that lead directly to happy customers.

Posted by Amy at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Back when I was a game developer, the key tenet my team lived by was "Would we play the game we are making?". Not surprisingly, this was also the most common question others would ask when they would first hear about our new projects. People don't want to buy games when the people who developed them wouldn't buy them. I think this test is just as relevant for IVR developers.

Step back from your project for a moment, and ask yourself, "Would I like to call into this IVR?" Not "Would this IVR be painful?" or "Will people try to skip the IVR and get to an operator?", instead "Would I like to call into this IVR?". When I first heard Audium's tagline about empowering developers to create voice applications that callers actually want to use, it first sounded like marketing-speak. But there is truth in that simple concept. Callers (who are ultimately customers) will not interact with an IVR that they do not enjoy.

Continue reading "The Golden Rule, IVR, and You" »

Posted by Vance at 09:07 PM | Permalink