Do you remember when companies started using automated call routers when you call Customer Service? Do you remember the first time you encountered it?
I was really wondering what was the first company to use it. I am thinking it was a company with a huge number of customers, like a phone company, but I doubt there was a single “first company” that we could identify.
This question is probably for older people; anyone under 25 probably grew up with it.
Whoever it was, I’m sure it started off with “please listen carefully as our options have recently changed”
I don’t remember. It was probably in the early 80s, and I still had a rotary phone.
I do remember a few systems that would tell you that you made an invalid choice – and then hang up on you.
And it wasn’t long after that they added, “Your call is important to us.” I still talk back to the recording when it tells me that.
Que tinny music
The lady who used to do those phone trees for Southern Bell (back before it was Bell South) had a speech impediment related to liquid consonants, resulting in it sounding like she was saying “Thank you for calling Southern Beu.”
I’ve come to loathe Mozart.
I do remember the first time it absolutely enraged me…in 1991. I needed to pay my bill with Qwest (Qworst!). The recording informed me that there were no humans available outside normal business hours. It then presented a number of options, including the option to pay my bill over the phone via credit card and automated system. It then guided me as I punched in my phone number (again), CC number, expiration dated, and zip code for verification. ONLY THEN was I informed that the TOTALLY AUTOMATED payment system could not accept any payments outside normal business hours.
You aim too low. I’m nine years older than that, and it’s always been a part of the phone experience as far as I recall. Sure, they did away with the “if you’re calling from a rotary phone” part when I was old enough to notice, but not until after press-# was well established.
Maybe by the mid 80’s when I was doing a job search. What I found even more shocking was showing up a the world headquarter of a large company and finding the receptionist replaced with a phone and a directory.
Frankly, I have never found them a problem. OTOH, I would have no problem killing anybody given a chance, that had anything to do with setting up the voice non recognition systen at SS and Medicare. Their websites suck too. I have a problem, I go to straight to my congressman’s office.
I don’t remember the first time, but I remember one time in the early 80’s when I was trying to get hold of someone at a local office.
I called the local office and got a recording to call the main office.
I called the main office and got a recording to dial the extension directly. I didn’t know the extension and it didn’t offer a directory or a dial 0 option.
I called someone at another office and begged them to give me the extension of the person I was actually looking for. No, they couldn’t transfer the call, but out of human kindness they did give me the person’s extension.
I called the main office, dialed the person’s extension and got transfered to voice mail. After listening to the pre-recorded announcement to leave a message, a second recording said “Voice mailbox is full.” Click.
The first touch-tone robotic system I dealt with on a regular basis was my bank’s bill paying system. This was in the mid 1980s, well before nearly everyone had computers. It worked pretty well, aside from the fact that once I punched in an extra digit and ended up paying $600 to my phone company. Fortunately, at the time, it didn’t create an immediate hardship so I just let it ride and didn’t have to pay my phone bill for a long time.