Hi gotoblack,
Thank you for a very interesting question.
Sacramento Business Journal
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1997/04/14/smallb10.html
Success in one easy lesson: Make promises and keep 'em
"Computers are our friends: For those of you wanting to enter the
brave new world of automated customer service, the current issue of
Inc. Technology has some tips.
Chief irritators for most customers: automated telephone attendants
and computerized data bases. People hate getting connected to an
automated attendant with a really long initial menu, connected to
another long menu, connected to a third menu, and a fourth, and a
fifth, and then maybe a busy signal or a dial tone.
If you want to see how truly irritating your own system is, call in
from the outside and try to use it like any other customer would. Make
your managers do it too, and have them staff the lines once in a while
to get firsthand contact with customers."
=========
Metaforix
http://www.metaforix.info/consumer_issues/
The automated message you hear while waiting to be placed on hold
"A while back, I posted a rant about the frustrating waste of time
that results when businesses treat their customers to ambiguous
voice-mail messages and incomplete voice-mail greetings. At the time,
I just kvetched in passing about those ubiquitous automated voice
menus that businesses love to install and everyone else loves to hate.
Today, however, I encountered my least-favorite automated voice menu,
one time too many. It belongs to a medium-size medical practice and
takes well over a minute to endure. Longer, if you press the wrong key
and get put on music hold."
[read article]
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Business Phone Systems | Small Business Phone Systems
http://smallbusinessphonesystems.blogspot.com/
Phone Games of the 21st Century
"I recently had reason to call my phone company in order to inquire
about some charges that were showing up on my bill. I first reached an
automated message that told me to press one for English, which I did,
followed by a menu with several options. Of the available options,
none involved speaking to an actual human being. This was the type of
phone system where you could either press the number of the option you
wanted or speak it into the receiver. After hearing all the available
options and knowing that not a single solitary one of them would
address my issue, I decided to take a gamble. I clearly said "customer
service" into the phone and was then told that what I had said did not
match any of the available options. I tried it again just in case it
was a hidden option and I hadn't spoken clearly the first time. Sure
enough, the automated voice told me I would be transferred to a
representative. I heard about 4 seconds of music and then a click. I
waited about five minutes before realizing I had been hung up on. I
went through this whole process a few more times before finally
reaching an actual human being.
The thing that irritates me the most is that many companies who should
be offering personalized customer service try their absolute best to
avoid having to speak with their customers. I can't understand whether
it's a lack of employees to field the calls or that they just assume
that I am to lazy to use the automated menu if, say...I only want to
find out how much my bill is. I'm sure there are more than a few
people out there who would want to talk to a human being even though
they can get the information they need without doing so, but what
about people like me who legitimately needed some real help? What
really takes the cake is that this is a phone company, and one who
can't or doesn't want to update their phone system to handle
customer's calls. I wish there were an organization dedicated to
rating these businesses' customer service policies so that they might
get some idea of just how poor they are doing in relation to their
competition. If there were, I would switch and give my business to the
company who offered the best customer service, even if it cost more to
do so."
=========
Information Week - Business Innovation Powered by Technology
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2005/12/help_us_help_ou.html
Help Us Help Ourselves By Patricia Keefe
"The same theory applies to automated sales and support systems, which
are often inexplicable to callers.
Another example - I had to call and cancel an appointment for my
mother. She gave me the doctor's office number and I called. Nightmare
City. It was one of the most convoluted, lengthy and many branched
automated voice systems I've ever tapped into. I gave up the first
time, gritted my teeth, guessed right a few times, and successfully
fought my way through the second try. So I am talking to my mother
about this path of most resistance - and she says she was able to get
the office to give her a direct line to her doctor, so I guess she was
holding out on me! But the whole time I was thinking - most of this
practice' patients are elderly. My mother, for example, is 79. For
those seniors who will even deal with an automated system in the first
place, I'm betting many of them won't ever make it out of this
voicemail gulag.
What were the designers of this system thinking? Not of their end
users, that's for sure.
As for the businesses deploying these systems - there should be a
payoff of some sort for roping consumers into doing some of your work
for you. At the very least prices should be held down if not back. Our
time has value too. If you want to save money on the backs of
consumers then you should make it worth their while. And if we can't
have easy-to-use, convenient and quick, automated processes, we'll
take the economic payoff, thank you."
=========
CallCenterMagazine.com
http://www.callcentermagazine.com/blog/archives/2005/11/please_press_0.html
Please press 0, 0, 0, 0, #, #, #, and say 'no' six times to speak to an operator.
[read article]
=========
Telecommunication Breakdown: An Overview of Challenges Facing Persons
with Disabilities
http://www.ucp.org/ucp_generaldoc.cfm/1/8/11211/11211-11211/2206
"When even able-bodied persons complain that one mistake made while
interacting with automated response often terminates the call, can you
imagine trying to input a credit card number to buy a holiday gift or
a CD over the phone when you are blind or work through a relay
service?"
=========
RetailWire
http://retailwire.com/In_Depth/Sngl_Discussion.cfm/10980
Automation and Customer Service: The Emperor Has No Clothes
"My personal experience with automated phone systems is that by the
time I reach a live person (and I will usually go through the process
until I do), I am more upset than I was when I began the call and the
live person has to work that much harder to satisfy me.
The question to me is: given how many customers become alienated by
these systems, and how much business is lost altogether, is there
really a cost savings in automating one's systems?"
*****
"Full Disclosure: I absolutely HATE automated voice systems. We don't
have one in this company and we never will.
Having said that:
[edit]
"My bottom line reason for telling you all this is not to complain
about my personal service issues (thanks for the therapy!), but to
make the point that our society has become so automated that we're now
often in a situation where the customer doesn't even receive POOR
customer service - there is nothing at all. It's man (and woman)
versus machine. The other day, on one of those automated service
lines, I actually heard, "Do not attempt to press any number for
customer service until you listen to all other options first - it will
not work!"
=========
Brand Autopsy
http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2004/11/your_brands_pho.html
?Companies spend millions on advertising, public relations and brand
building activities to make the phone ring. But when the prospect
calls, they?re greeted by automated voice systems with prerecorded
voices that share little with the brand they?ve worked so hard to
create in the consumer?s mind.? -- Marcus Graham (CEO, GM Voices)"
=========
Your take: Automated phone systems
http://www.networkworld.com/net.worker/columnists/2005/0926gittlen.html
=========
How to Get Through to a Real Live Person
http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=344796
By PlanetFeedback.com Staff - Double-edged sword
"Nancy Friedman, the "Telephone Doctor," who consults for corporations
around the country, says voicemail itself isn't the problem, or even
the issue.
"It's the dreaded automated attendant that most of us get fed up
with," she says. "Voicemail systems are neither good nor bad, they are
tools that, if used properly, can be the time-saving conveniences
their manufacturers say they are.
"We either swear by it or swear at it," Friedman says of voicemail
systems, "depending on how they're used."
A marketing research survey conducted on behalf of Telephone Doctor to
determine if phone courtesy affects sales indicated:
· 65% stated that they are frustrated when immediately put on hold
when calling businesses."
· 65% prefer doing business with companies who use live voices when
answering calls versus companies using automated recordings."
=========
Business Spotline Online
http://www.business-spotlight.de/CoCoCMS/generator/viewDocument.php?doc=5447&archive=1
Angry on the phone
"What annoys customers most about call centres? According to a recent
study by the UK market researcher Mintel, it would seem pretty much
everything. Of the 2,000 adults surveyed, only five per cent said they
had never experienced a problem.
The biggest complaint was about waiting on hold, with some 60 per cent
of callers frustrated about having to wait for long periods before
someone finally answered their call. In busy call centres, customers
often have to wait for over 15 minutes before being connected to a
"live" customer service agent. For many, that's far too long, so they
abandon the call. Almost a third of callers claim to have hung up
while being left in the queue. Maybe not surprisingly, those aged
between 25 and 34 are the least tolerant towards call centres, with
around 35 per cent abandoning calls, while just 25 per cent of those
aged 65 and over do so.
Callers are also annoyed about the increased use of automated phone
systems, also known as iVR (interactive voice response) systems. Over
one third of consumers dislike the synthetic voice."
=========
Experience the Message - How Experiential Marketing Is Changing the Brand World
http://www.experiencethemessage.com/
"Companies are spending millions of dollars on these systems,
unwittingly wasting millions more. Simply put, customers and consumers
absolutely hate IVR. We want to talk to real people.
Like Ralph Nader writes: "In the old Soviet Union, shoppers stood in
long lines hoping the shelves would not be empty before they reached
the counter. In our country, tens of millions of Americans are told to
press a bewildering variety of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. for several tiers
sometimes, then be put on hold, waiting, waiting, waiting."
It's amazing that companies continue to try and get away with cutting
corners and spoiling the consumer experience. They should know better.
We are overly-connected. The system can be cracked. And in the
process...ridiculed.
There is a certain amount of dark comedy at play here. Millions -- if
not billions -- of dollars spent by companies on systems designed to
shun, lock out and ignore human interaction are wasted because one
human being -- Paul English -- decides to crack and publish the
codes."
Read Ralph Nader article:
http://www.nader.org/interest/050902.html
=========
FortWayne.com
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/13619847.htm
Dial-a-human: How to outsmart automated phone systems
"Most companies know that consumers hate their automated phone
systems, called IVR or Interactive Voice Response. But they also know
that automation makes financial sense.
A company may spend 50 cents to $1 a minute when a representative
answers your call compared with 5 cents a minute when an automated
phone system does the work, said Paul Kowal, a Boston consultant on
customer-service quality."
=========
http://www.furl.net/urlInfo.jsp?url=http://www.paulenglish.com%2Fivr%2F
"IVR (interactive voice response) systems allow companies to service
many incoming phone calls with a computer instead of always giving
consumers the choice of skipping the computer and asking to speak with
an actual human. But consumers in most cases do not want to talk with
computers, and they are furious about it. IVRs themselves are not
evil. Some IVRs work well for certain applications, such as checking
flight status. When IVRs first became popular (1980s and 1990s), you
could almost always press "0" if you wanted to immediately be
connected to a human operator. Yet many companies have removed that
option, and they now try to make it very difficult for you to reach a
human. This is a very bad idea. For example, what if I am: * a senior
citizen who does not want to talk with computers. * someone hard of
hearing or in a noisy environment or on a bad cell phone connection,
where communication with a computer is more difficult than talking
with an actual human. * someone driving a car who does not want to
push buttons while driving. * a consumer who is already familiar with
the IVR system she is calling, and knows that the IVR will not help
her. All IVRs should allow consumers to decide when they want to
simply press "0" to be put in queue for a human customer service
agent."
=========
The Seven Rings of CRM Hell
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21975.html
Who Is To Blame?
"So, how have these systems developed such an appalling rep? More to
the point, why can some companies or organizations offer such sterling
services while others leave their customers floundering in "voice-mail
jail," as Schoeller terms it. There are bad IVR systems out there, he
agrees. But the companies that run them hate them as much as the
consumers do. "I don"t think there is any company out there that wants
to have its name associated with a bad IVR system."
True, this may not comfort a consumer trapped on the phone desperately
trying to remember whether it was option one or two he had pressed
that got him to a particular menu item. But it is important for
companies to understand how some IVRs seem to morph into meandering
and circular pathways despite best intentions -- if only because many
of these very firms are getting set to invest in new IVR and phone
systems."
=========
Moving Forward With Voice-Enabled IVR By TRACEY E. SCHELMETIC
Editorial Director, CUSTOMER INTER@CTION Solutions
http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2005/nov/1215452.htm
"Increasingly, it seems the days of touch-tone IVR are drawing to an
end. I suspect, however, you're unlikely to find too many consumers
unhappy about this prospect, and I suspect thoughts of the
old-fashioned IVR will generate little nostalgia in the future.
Most people hate them. For good reason. They're limiting and
frustrating. They appear to serve one purpose: to get you off the
phone without allowing you to satisfactorily complete your inquiry."
[read article]
=========
IVR hang-ups a bad call for companies, customers
http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid11_gci936690,00.html
By Barney Beal, SearchCRM.com News Writer
"It's the sound that so many customers hate to hear on the other end
of their telephone line and the one that so many corporate
cost-cutters love -- that voice telling you to "say or press 'one,'
'two' or 'three.'"
Interactive voice response (IVR), software that accepts a combination
of voice and touch-tone telephone input and provides pre-recorded
responses, has been around for almost a decade. Yet many organizations
still don't use it properly, according to one analyst.
While there are certainly some decent IVR designs, the nightmare of
endless numbered menus stands out in consumers' minds, according to
Penny Reynolds, senior partner with the Call Center School, a
Nashville, Tenn.-based consultancy."
[read article]
=========
it's my life... Don't you forget...
http://deaf258.com/blog/2006/01/ivr-cheat-sheettm-by-paul-english.html?seenIEPage=1
IVR Cheat Sheet(tm) by Paul English
"Deaf people hate numbers or voice prompts. This is great!"
=========
keyword search:
consumers customers hate dislike
automated telephone attendants
automated voice systems
automated voice menu
IVR interactive voice response
CRM customer Relationship Management issues
IVR Cheat Sheet by Paul English
=========
Best regards,
tlspiegel |
