Virgin Mobile, not only does it not understand anything you say, but it uses slang. I hate that system.
I used to hate that menu. Hate it. And since the only reason I would ever call Medco in the first place is because they had made a mistake,
By the time I got to a person, I was angry at them for having made a mistake and angry at them for having made me go through their damn voice mail system. And since, invariably, the first question from the agent would be “Can you give me your account number” (the one I’d just had to enter into the telephone 3 times)…
are these systems designed to provoke the customers into phone rage?
Double ha! Yes. Fucking Qwest. I’m usually a fan of the press zero over and over, or keep saying “operator” technique, to which those murderous whores at Qwest have responded, “Fuck you.” As if the horrible voice robot wasn’t a big enough of a FU. Some places let you key or voice, even if they don’t say so. If they ever give me a list of things to say, I press the corresponding number and see if it gets me anywhere. Sometimes it does.
The horrible irony is that humans pressing numbers and generating tones was designed in the sixties as the ideal input system for telephone menus. Voice was only to be used by the system for feedback. That way, each side of the system was able to work in the best way it could.
I wish they’d make the voice recognizer systems optional. They should be able to transfer to a numeric menu or an operator at any time by pressing zero.
People at Qwest have answered the phone “fuck you”? I would be horrified, and somebody would be in big trouble. I believe you, but my god, that’s nuts.
I’ve have entirely different experiences with Qwest in the last ten years- they’ve been excellent in their customer service to me. I must be lucky!
Usually when I hear someone complain about voice menus, they’re the ones that don’t speak normally when using one. They slow down and think they’re speaking more clearly, but my understanding is these systems are designed to recognize words spoken at a normal pace and tone.
My dad, for example, has no accent to speak of and can never get these systems to recognize his name. Instead of “Pat” he’ll say " PAAAAAAT". Everyone I’ve actually heard use these systems does the same thing. Is it any wonder you can’t get through if you’re talking like that?
I hate the ones that flat-out don’t have a bail-out “let me talk to something that has a bloodflow” option. Sometimes you know that your reason for calling is not going to be accomodated by any of their menu options, no matter how deeply buried.
“If you inadvertently cancelled your service and therefore do not have a valid logon at this time, and are not sure whether or not you can declare your cancellation to have been an error or if, instead, your only option is to reapply from scratch, press 291”
“If you received a message on your answering machine that purports to be from us, alleging that you owe money despite the fact that you do not have an account with us and therefore have no account number to enter, please press pound if you could make out the name or extension of the individual who left the message; if the name and extension were garbled and incoherent, please press 73,206”
“You have reached the queue for people who are calling about out of production hardware manufactured by one of the companies we acquired in the merger in order to find out whether companies that used to provice maintenance contract work can be identified in case they still work on those types of equipment after maintenance contract periods have expired. Using the letters on your touchtone phone, please spell out the original name of the acquired corporation. If you do not know the name of the original corporation please press 14,101 followed by the star key and then the brand name as it appears on the faceplace of the product itself, followed by the pound key. If you reached this queue in error and intended to be transferred to the que for people who are calling about hardware that is still in production but for which you only have the model or brand name used by the former corporation that we acquired in a merger, please press star 1939125 and wait for the prompt”
Ha ha. No, they they have not answered any of my calls (yet) with “Fuck you for calling Qwest.” I’m saying that Qwest is one of those companies that forces you to use their shoddy voice recognition program, and if you can’t get to where you want using it, because you keep saying “operator” over and over again, or you keep pressing zero, are not allowed to key numbers at all, or if the damn voice program just can’t understand your speech, their robot tells you to call back later, then hangs up. This just sounds like a royal “Fuck you!” by the company to me.