Even the Experts Get Caught
January 22nd, 2008 . by Moshe YudkowskyHere’s a short letter from the editor of Speech Technology Magazine, the one company you’d think would positively, absolutely get their phone IVR to sound absolutely wonderful. That turns out not to be the case… in fact, they don’t even use speech recognition!I know they investigated and solved the problem (I visited their offices recently); when they provide a follow-up letter about this incident I’ll post that link as well.The moral of the story: think for yourself and think for your customers. First, think for yourself. Don’t blindly copy idiotic statements from other systems (”Please pay attention as our menu options have changed”) that are (a) not true and (b) not useful.And second, think for your customers. Again, it’s easy enough to put yourself into your customer’s shoes. Will your customers be mollified if you say “your call is important to us” or will they feel patronized? (Hint: when you call someone else’s system, how do you feel about that announcement?)
I had to laugh at this one as I could have written it yesterday - not the bit about STM, as I’m rather fond of them, but about the copying bad design.
I was in queue for a contact center and I had my speaker phone on so I could continue to work. Sure enough, every 20 seconds or so they would break into their own informercial (which they have instead of music on hold) and say “Your call is important to us”. The interrupt was pretty loud. My 9 year old son was home sick, and suddenly I hear from the other room “Mommy, I don’t think your call is very important to them”. I almost fell off my chair laughing.