I have to call the IRS several times a day here at work and their system has this little trick where if you don’t push a button fast enough, it will automatically kick you over to their voice activated system (which I’m 100% sure is not set to recognize English, but rather only will understand Klingon). Pisses me off, it does.
In fact, it seems like more and more business are switching to entirely voice activated menus. I can feel the rage boiling every time the menu starts with, “You may now use our new VOICE menu!” Oh, I may? Bastards.
The worst one is my credit card company. If I call to get the balance off of my card, I can’t do it any public place, as a seagull flying 50 feet away will make the voice menu think I’m asking for a $50,000 cash advance (ok, that isn’t entirely true, but it will start a perpetual cycle of- “I’m sorry, I couldn’t understand that, let’s try again!”).
And of course the most annoying thing is how every system uses different vernacular. To one, you might need to say “Customer Service”- to another “Agent”- and to another- “Exalted High Leader Who Will Give Me My Mother Fucking Bank Account Balance.”
Ok. I feel better now.
Seriously, though, why are these becoming more popular? Are they somehow cheaper than a touch tone system? Were touch tone systems getting that many complaints? I only ever hear people whining that they can’t get ahold of someone, not that pushing buttons is hard. I don’t get it.
I usually just keep repeating “Agent” over and over and over, no matter what it says until I get kicked over to a person.
AGENT
First I need to ask you a few questions, what is your zip code?
AGENT.
I’m sorry I didn’t understand that, please speak your zip code?
AGENT
I’m sorry, I still didn’t get that, what is your CC Number
AGENT
Hold on while I transfer you to an agent.
If it isn’t a voice menu, I just enter non-sensical things until it kicks me over. If you enter your zip code as 993#* or your CC Number as 32212555##442212 enough times it’ll give up.
I think the idea is that you ought to be able to say what you want and have it understood, which should be significantly faster than listening for every single option. If you need to know what option corresponds to what number, then necessarily you need to hear them all. If you can say “billing dispute” and the robot knows what you mean, then time is saved.
Although they’re bad at understanding me, if that was all there was to it, I’d probably prefer repeating myself to having to listen to a long list of options.
What really gets me about all these robot phone systems is when none of the options are what I want, which is common. At least if I can listen to my 5 choices I can pick the closest one, try to get a person, and get to where I really want to be. Yelling things into the phone hoping something I say is sort of close to what I really want is endlessly aggravating.
Have you ever run into a phone system that jerks you around for 5 minutes then tells you they’re sorry you’re having trouble with their system and that YOU should call back when you think you can do better, and hangs up on you? I have. It’s one of the most annoying things in the whole world.
They can’t seem to understand me at all, despite having a normal voice and bog-standard Midwestern American accent which is hardly exotic. Seriously, it is a rare “voice recognition” system that can understand me at all.
Why don’t we put some humans back to work answering phones? It’s kind of a suck job, but it would work better than voice “recognition” and help some human beings on top of it.
HA! While reading the OP, my first thought was Qwest.
I had to call them a few weeks ago and the generic dude with his patronizing “Ok!” made me want to throw the phone out the window.
As it was Qwest, I obviously couldn’t obtain resolution to the problem, so I had to call back. That time I just kept saying “No” to every generic dude query until it sent me to a human.
I detest voice driven menus. For the love of God, what thimble-brain first hit upon the supposition that, instead of just silently pressing buttons and keeping our personal business completely private, we would rather be forced to BELLOW and e n u n c i a t e our questions and problems with the bank or the gas company?
Yeah, that really makes you look good at the office.
However, I’ve found that in most–but not all–such cases you can enter the sequential number of the option, even though they don’t tell you this. So if you call your utility, for example, and the system gives you a list of options, like this:
New Installation
Repairs and Inspections
Billing Department
you can simply press 1 for the installation department, or 3 for billing problems, and so on.
Bog standard Californian here. Calling Social Security, enunciating very carefully.
Give name.
“You said; Renned Tap, is this correct?”
No, tries again.
“You said; Banned Rap, is this correct?”
No, tries again.
“You said; Ratted Bap, is this correct?”
No, tries again.
“You said; Ruttled Red, is this correct?”
Hangs up, puts head through wall, drives to office.
Press One if you want to know the temperature in Bolivia.
Press Two if you want to hear about our special offer for anyone who is left handed, and speaks Farsi.
Press Three if you want to bitch slap me.
Press Four if you want to hear me say this menu again.
Our office hours are from 8 to 8:06 on every 19th Tuesday of the month. If you are getting this message, we are not in the office.
Did you know that if you go to our website, we can ignore you there as well? Simply go to w w w bulshitservice dot com and we will be happy to disconnect you there as well.
I use the phone a lot at work, and I go into my standby routine: AGENT HELP HUMAN CUSTOMERSERVICE SOMEONE PLEASE ZERO OPERATOR…
If those don’t work, add the heavy curse words. SHIT FUCK CRAP DAMN. I think a lot of systems can detect curse words and they surmise you are angry, thus connecting you to humans. This scheme works quite often for me, as well as cracking up my cube mates.
I once was stuck in 14 minutes of voice and number menu mazes with Immigration & Naturalization Services, only to finally be hung up on without ever speaking to a human. And English is my native language. I pity the people with language barriers who have to speak to a human there.
I call Medco from work a lot, and their system is the worst. They force you to go through it before you get any chance of speaking to someone. Just thinking about it almost makes me have a seizure, it’s so infuriating. It is, naturally, incredibly slow, insisting on verifying each and every answer, “you answered 5…2…0…etc, etc., if this is correct, please press 1”. It will take 10-15 minutes to get to the end, and then right at the last minute, it won’t hear you correctly. You’ll say yes, it’ll think you said no, then it will apologize for your having a problem, then you’ll get to wait for a person. *%#&!!!
I was trying to arrange a flight from Bahrain to Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan). American Airlines system (the flight was on Gulf Air which is a AA partner) interpreted Bahrain as “El Paso, Texas” and Erbil as “Turku, Finland”
Alas no flights from El Paso to Turku were available… although speaking to an agent flights from Bahrain to Erbil were no problem.
I kinda feel bad for the poor bastards who actually record all the prompts. Someday one of them will be out in public and have to ask a question which sounds like one of those horrible lines and it’s gonna get them killed.
“You said ‘chicken kiblets’, is that correct?”
“No, I said the daily special is…wait a minute, you’re that jackass from ATT’s help line, aren’t you?”
“NO! I swear it’s not me!”
(Sound of man being shoved into an oven by enraged mob)
My mortgage company was the worst. I was late on payment and tried calling them to arrange it, since the option to pay on their site was removed. I called two different numbers and many departments, all of them telling me I was late on my mortgage (no shit Sherlock that’s why I’m calling!) and to pay it immediately. I don’t know how I actually got to an actual person.
People always know when I talk to an IVR system; I start repeating “Get me a goddamn fucking human being” over and over until I get someone. I know for a fact the poor schmucks that work on these numbers loathe IVR systems, so I never bitch at them about it. I would know, I used to get those calls all the time when I worked for a grocery store’s internal helpdesk. It was the worst thing ever! Voice recognition works best with no background noise, and no accents. Grocery stores and fuel stations are noisy, static-filled(thanks BellSouth for building your reputation on Best Minimum Effort!), and the callers talk quickly and with thick Southern accents.
Whoever thought IVRs were a wonderful idea needs to be tied down into some Saw-like contraption, the only means of escape being to convince the voice activated computer to release them before they get shredded to bits.
I work in a call center where the hold time is generally less than two or three minutes on most nights. The problem I have is that people seem to think that I am a machine when I answer.
I can’t even count the number of time I have said, “Thank you for calling support, this is…”
Beeep!
“I’m sorry, this is…”
Beeep!
My only recourse is to be real quiet until they finally say, “Hello? I’m sorry, I thought you were the machine.”
