The company that I work for has two sides of its operations. The first side of it is CRM Software development, which is the side of the business that I work on.
The other side - which is the more stressful side - is the call routing side, where we deploy and support systems for call centres; phone menus 'Press 1 for [...]', etc.
Worker Bee was on the phone, as he often is, and being the lucky person who gets to sit next to him, I hear his end of a lot of conversations.
One day though, he was on the phone, and I heard a very different sort of conversation.
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Phone's cut off |
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Phone's cut off |
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Phone's cut off |
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Cut off |
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Cut off |
| Worker Bee | ... |
| Worker Bee | Cut off |
| Marshmallow | Oh my god WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING TO?! |
His phone at home had been cut off due to some overzealous line workers, and he was calling through to the company to let them know about it. They didn't have a traditional 'Press 1 for...' menu like the ones that we deploy, they had a speech recognition menu. Supposedly the 'next level up' in terms of call routing technology. The menu said to Worker Bee, "Please tell us whether you would like to pay your account, or if you're phone's cut off."
Worker Bee, told the menu, "Phone's cut off."
The menu said, "I don't understand you. Can you please repeat that?"
In the end, he sent them an email.
9 comments:
Apparently the key is to swear at the machine. Then you get transferred to a real person. The fouler the better. Go on, give it a go. You'll feel better.
I'll let Worker Bee know that for next time. ^_^
Haha, that'd be awful :D
Indeed, I'd rather press a button any day of the week!
Where do you work?
I'm not going to put that information on my blog - I'll send you a message on Facebook.
Hmmm I have a sneaky suspiscion that I work for the company that implemented that Speech IVR :) I find it works best when u put on anamerican accent... probably why it worked for me and not the other developers :D But yeah speech recognition can be a bit of a pain ;)
Meatcone
Meatcone
HAH!
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