I think thats what they call it . You dial up your phone company because you notice a discrepancy in your phone bill. To get to a human being that you can nail down you must decide whether the nature of your inquiry/complaint falls under 1,2,3,4, or the 5th option. Having made a tentative decision, you can now choose between 11,12,13,14,and15 options. Now at this point, you hope 13 is what you want so you are give 131, 132 133 and 134, 134 being for an operator which at this point seems to be your best bet after all because the nature of your call just doesn’t seem to fit a specific category. However after 10 minutes on hold you begin to wonder if you’re ever really ging to connect.
Young people, I’ve been around for over 50 years. This really sucks! Why do you guys accept this bullshit?
I’ve encountered well-structured, logical call-handling menu systems like this, but I’ve run into even more of the variety you’re complaining about, and damn, they are infuriating! Almost all of them, however, must have a way of handling callers who still don’t have touch-tone phones, which means that your best bet is often not to push any buttons at all. That will usually get you to a human being. Sometimes, pressing zero will accomplish the same thing. Sometimes, however, there’s nothing to do but head for their offices, and lock and load.
I’m on hold with my auto insurance right now, and I think this is a good system, for both sides.
I called a few minutes ago to get a quote. By choosing the correct option, I was able to connect with someone who could answer my question right away. Then I conferred with Mr. Rilch, and when we agreed, I called back. Soon, I will be speaking with either the same person or someone in her department, and they will change our policy, snip snap snorum.
…later…
Okay, it wasn’t snip snap snorum, because they need photos of the truck. But my point is, can you imagine if they didn’t have this routing system? I would have had to tell my story to the first person who answered the phone. Then they would have had to decide who could best deal with my situation and patch me through to them. If their line was busy, I would have been bounced back to the receptionist, and they would have had to choose someone else, and so on and so forth until one or the other of us was ready to chew glass. This way, I’m only on hold once, until someone in the right department picks up, which they will.
And I really don’t see what’s so funny about that “Nina speaking…Just a moment!” gag from Office Space. What if she wasn’t there to answer? No one could get through to Accounts Payable at all.
Please listen to the instructions closely, for they have recently changed.
apparantly the word “recently” can mean “any time in the past 25 years” in the automated voice messaging system biz.
I think they all say that, hoping it will make people listen to the commands as opposed to just hitting “0” to get the operator.
Unless you’re the phone company, in which case you program your voice system so that ‘0’ doesn’t work until after the user is forced to make a selection from at least three menus, including one that asks them for permission to use their account information to sell them stuff they don’t need.
And that bitch Claire…I left Sprint and damnit, I think she is working the fucking night shift at AT&T.
Where I work we recently got a new phone system installed, and one of the requirements was that when someone called a live person would answer. If someone wasn’t currently available they would get a short message saying to hold on, we’d get to them in a moment. The company acted like this was the oddest thing they ever heard. “Wouldn’t you rather send them to voicemail?” they would ask. “No”, the powers that be answered, "a real person would answer. This delayed them getting the phones installed because they had to reconfigure them to be able to do this. :rolleyes: