I Pit voice-driven telephone menus

The BBQ Pit
1

Dunno if that’s the right term for them, but they’re suddenly ubiquitous.

I’m talking about the sort of thing where you call your bank and it gives you a menu of stuff like, "If you want to know what your current balance is, say, “Balance.”

Thanks, but I’d really rather push 2 on my touch-tone phone. The ones where you speak your answer seem to take 2 to 3 times as long.

First, they correctly understand me maybe 50-60% of the time.

Second, all sorts of extraneous noises can throw their voice recognition software into a tizzy. Clearing your throat will screw them up royally. And whatever they do with the sound when I’m on those menus, it seems to amplify the otherwise unnoticeable noises that occur when my hand moves against the phone receiver, which also screws up the voice-recognition software.

Third, when you do something, anything, that the voice recognition software can’t cope with, they have the recording say something like: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand what you just said,” before starting over with the entire menu.

By the time I actually get to a customer service representative (and the whole point of the menus is to make it very hard to do so), I’m ready to jump through the phone and throttle them; the only thing that keeps me civil is that I know they’re not responsible.

And inevitably, I have to go through any number of menus, because if it was something that didn’t require my speaking with a person, I would have taken care of it on their website, whether ‘their’ is Verizon or Virgin Mobile (shut up, Simone, you overly chatty irritant), or United Air Lines (where the customer service people are in India and don’t speak English well enough to deal with anything outside the box anyway, nor can they transfer your call to an American), or whoever.

So like it or not, I have to put up with all the damned voice-driven menus, and I have to put up with the extra time they add to my attempt to get answers to my problems. Because if I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t.

2

They’re called IVR, or Intelligent (HAH!) Voice Recognition. I understand your frustration and though you don’t mention in your post which companies you run into w/ it, this might help. Also, it’s far less of a hassle to bank online than you might think.

Now that I look at it, I think I got that link from the boards initially!

3

I went through one of those when my cable internet went out. I called up Cox Communications (I owe them a pit thread one of these days) and had to go through a bunch of stupid voice commands. The worst part was it seemed like they were trying to make it sound like there was a real person on the other end.

“First, I’d like you to check and make sure your cable modem is plugged in. When you’ve checked this, say ‘next’.” (Interestingly enough, I learned that to this particular IVR, “fuck you” means the same thing as “next”.)

Of course, the problem was on their end (they had “upgraded” their network, with which my modem was incompatible. They never bothered to tell me or anything, so I had to sit there for 20 minutes going through this unintelligent IVR.

4

511 is a local traffic info hotline and it has voice menus. Now, I can understand the argument that it’s better that people don’t have to look at their phones while driving (though I think that if pressing two severely hinders your driving abilities, you have bigger problems), but where in the hell would you expect more background noise than in your car?! I think rolling up the windows and turning off the stereo while holding a phone is a bit worse than pressing a button.

5

It’s also not fun to be on your break/lunch at work, at your desk in a not-so-private office, and have to basically broadcast your call to anyone in the area. I like the menus that give you voice and push-button options for each step.

6

I’m with you, brother, I effing hate those things. And I share the sentiment about not wanting to speak my business out loud (to a machine, for eff’s sake!) while I am in my shared office on my lunch hour. Just stop!

In one case I tried everything to get a live person, then I accidentally found out that the magic formula was to speak the word “associate”. Not “operator” or “help me” or anything a person might actually think of to say. I’m sure they picked the most obscure word they could think of.

Gah!

7

I knew there was something I left out of my OP!

And not only that, but if I keep my voice low in order to minimize the annoyance factor to the person in the next cubicle, that’s another thing that seems to increase the error rate.

Portia, thanks for the cheat-sheet! I’ll have to make copies for home and the office. (And I do bank online, btw, and almost never call them up; a banking example was just the most straightforward one that came to mind as I was typing the OP.)

8

De nada!! :slight_smile:

Check back once in awhile, he updates it.

9

I went through this just today, with my health insurance provider, Cigna. I always have trouble with these because if I speak in a normal tone it can’t hear me at all, as my voice is fairly high. I have to speak loudly enough to wake my son, who has a late schedule. I was just trying to find out if they would pay for something, and none of the options seemed to apply. When I picked "authorizations I just heard a lot of gibberish that meant nothing to me, and I started saying a lot of things it couldn’t understand (I’m pretty sure one of them was “Jesus Christ”). At this point it asked me if I wanted an associate, and I took a wild guess and said “yes”. That got me a human.

10

My apologies, my dear RT, for hijacking your thread, but may I just say, Portia, you utterly rock for that link. I have it saved to my favorites, and plan to send it to everyone in my address book. Because is there anyone out there that does not hatehatehate phone trees in general, and voice recognition menus in particular?

11

Hear, hear!

I fucking hate Emily, the automated voice representative at Bell Canada. From what I can tell she is the most hated non-person in the country.

My favourite part was, after Bell screwed up my move and I had spent literally hours on the phone with them in the space of a week, when I got CUT OFF after a CSA had put me on hold, and I called right back and Emily couldn’t understand me (for some reason, “you assholes fucked up my move and then cut off my call” wasn’t one of the options she was programmed to recognize) and I said something like “Arrgh!” and it bounced me back to the beginning of the menu …

Thanks for your rant.

(FYI, if you press zero twice, you can skip Emily when you call Bell).

12

Glad to help! I took the list in to work hand out to my department and it swiftly became the most photocopied thing since the “You know you’re from Michigan when…” jokes.
I realize IVR was supposed to be an improvement over picking a number from a menu, but it’s so ridden w/ error as to be far worse than waiting for the number of the item you want.

13

I will not use these things. I stab the “0” key until they transfer me to a customer service rep. Unfortunately, I’ve actually run across a few systems (such as for my health insurance) where not only does that not work, they tell you “if you do not have a touch-tone phone, please call back on a touch-tone phone”.

That cheat-sheet Portia posted a link to in here just might save lives due to lower stress…good job!

14

I work in the monitoring center for a telecom company. We have equipment at customer sites nationwide. Said equipment comes in occasionally with power alarms when there’s some kind of trouble. So 3 or 4 times a night I have to call power companies all over the U.S.

All these automated systems want you to put in a phone number or account number, but I don’t have that info because it’s not our building. The better systems let you push 0 to get to a person. Others aren’t so bad because you can get to a person by pushing nothing and it assumes you don’t have a touch tone phone.

But the latest and worst ones have the IVR and will not connect you to a person without a phone number or account number. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that response. Please try your call again later” click Nothing pisses me off more than being cut off by a fucking computer.

15

I had to call my health insurance provider (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) the other day and for some reason, since it was a local number, I expected a live person to pick up the phone.

As soon as the recorded voice started talking, I exclaimed “Oh motherfucker” to which she replied, “I’m sorry, I think you said THREE”. I was shocked at the response and that hanging split second after the “I think you said” when I actually expected it to repeat exactly what I said. I busted out laughing and hung up the phone!

16

That’s hilarious! But just how thick is your accent?? I’ve been repeating that phrase over w/ a drawl and I can’t hear ‘three’ at all. (Yes, I’m sitting in my quiet apartment drawling ‘motherfucker’ to myself, what’s it to ya?)

17

[Minor hijack]Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. WTF? While ‘it’ may include more than one, ‘your call’ is singular, therefore having no order unto itself. I’d prefer them to say, “We’ll talk to you when everyone who called before you has either ripped their phone out of the wall, died while on hold, or committed seppuku.”[/Mh]

18

“Lost Baggage.”

“LOST…BAGGAGE.”

“Yes. Yes!”

“No.”

“Santa Ana, California.”

“Santa Ana, California!”

“FOUR. ONE. FIVE.”

“Agent.”

“Agent.”

“AGENT!”

“What the…GARG!”

That was me on the phone to United Airlines two days ago. The “GARG” was when I learned, after fighting my way through the voice-recognition phone maze to the option where I finally could ask to talk to a living organism, that if all operators are busy then the airline doesn’t put you on hold, but instead tells you to call back later. Holy crap, did that piss me off.

Fortunately for United Airlines a nice man drove up to my apartment with my luggage about 10 minutes later. Had he not done so, I would have been forced to tear apart a United Airlines lost-baggage office with my bare hands, screaming “Agent! Agent! HAHAHA!” all the while.

19

IVR = interactive voice response

IVR providers (this is big biz) sell IVR because they charge their customers big $ to play those IVR scripts.

E.G. IVR provider “East Interactive” is the vendor who provides the IVR services to “Country Bank”. Now, Country Bank would be just fine with four DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency - aka touch tones) options, but East convinces them there is value in using interactive voice response. Interactive voice reponse is an 'add-on" to basic interactive telephone service, and East makes $$$, charging Country Bank every time an IVR message is played!!. Also, East’s presentations, loaded with hip and cool IVR, looks like gold to Country bank, because it is really helping Country bank with their image (aka BRANDING). …so they think.

Fact is, there are a limited number of reasons to use IVR… and in most cases, using DTMF is the most efficient way to go.

20

I really don’t have an accent. I’m accustomed to talking to people from all over the country. People don’t think I sound like I"m from New Orleans, but locals don’t think I sound like I"m from somewhere else.

Either way, the way I say ‘motherfucker’ sounds absolutely nothing like ‘three’.