These interfaces are almost like a dark pattern because of how bad they are.
"Hi, in a few words, what can I help you with today?"
> "billing"
"It sounds like you have a question about your bill. I can help you with that! If you can give a few words to describe the reason you are calling, I can help you with your bill."
> "billing"
"OK, let me get you to a representative who can help!"
... instead of spending 10 minutes wrangling with the vapid AI, I can actually move on with my day after speaking to a human. Was this the future we envisioned in the 90s? I think not. Some systems let you spam 0 (zero) and it transfers to a human, but more and more are requiring you to interface with the system in some way, even if disabled or impaired.
But I hear you. I recently wanted to change the ownership of my cellphone account. "Change ownership", "It sounds like you want to change cellphone plans, is that correct?", "Agent", "Okay, let me get you to a representative".
The only tasks these things are equipped to do, are the tasks that I can do via the company's online portal, and in a much less frustrating manner. I wonder who is actually using these things.
It's annoying when my issue isn't on the list, since I'll have to hear it 50 times. And it's incredibly aggravating when my issue is on the list, but the website doesn't actually work right. But it's not hard to understand why it happens.
Yeah, that's unhelpful if "the website" is a sprawling, vast wasteland. Finding a specific thing on an obese, convoluted site is like trying to find the bucket of ice cream in Siberia. I always check the site first, so if I am calling... it's because your website is pretty bad.
So if I do find the thing I need and it is broken, then I call and dodge the idiot AI, and the beleaguered agent or offers the pathetic advice of: "It's on the website". I tell them it doesn't work, and this has led to two outcomes, either the agent tries to do it and it is so broken and fucked up that they tell me that's it's down and I have to call back or try the website days or weeks later, or I am lucky and the agent has to do a tedious task that I would have preferred to do myself online.
I get an email "Hey, I need to contact you so we can proceed, what method would you prefer?" I reply "Email, please" provide the information I assume the rep needs and which the online form should have been able to ask me and offer "What else do you need".
"Is there a time I can call you and [go over the script and fill out a form on my computer, as if you'd just stayed on hold hours ago]?"
10/10
Failing that I also resort to answering in one word answers. Bots can't handle any sort of ambiguity. Even when they manage to solve the language-parsing problem, people will still just bark one word answers at anything that looks or sounds remotely non-human[1] because that's how the early AI's trained us. The future-concept of people chatting away to robots is incredibly unlikely because to do that you need a level of empathy for the person/object you are talking to. We've clearly shown so far that we just don't have it for bots.
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[1] Like the 19th century British Explorer shouting English at the natives.
Usually you'll get it try to say stuff, give up and then say "Thanks, I'll put you through to one of our team"
The people using the automated phone services are the people without internet or even computers.
Believe me, they exist ;)
"Okay, let me get you to a representative."
"I'm sorry, it looks like you want to talk to a representative. You need to answer a few questions first."
Very HAL-like.
Old people. I'm not kidding. I used to do PCI compliance work with call centers. I've listened in on many a call to verify procedures. Call centers deal with an unending stream of older people who cannot or will not use "computers". They want to talk to a person on a phone. The people who are comfortable with the online interface only call when the online interface fails them. Old people go to the telephone first.
And there is a growing subset of old people who are functionally illiterate. I don't mean they don't know how to read, I mean their eyesight is diminished to the point that using the computer/phone/tablet is uncomfortable. Or their fingers don't move well enough for a keyboard/touchscreen. The phone is simple and reliable, not requiring either visual or physical dexterity.
Even non tech items like opening a bag of chips or box of crackers. I estimate that some packaging must require 40+ lbs to open. And I think of the "how it's made" show and how advanced manufacturing plants are. So they use all this tech to make a box of crackers as cheaply as possible, they have cameras fast enough to find and remove a single dark grain of rice in a torrential stream, but put zero thought into the UX experience and how the user can open the box.
It sounds like the simplest "tech fix" for this phone menu is once their account is found,
if (age > 60 ) sendToPerson ();
Furthermore, you could do "soft" account verification with their number. So if they call from a number that matches an elderly customer, just route it straight to a human, even though numbers can be spoofed it's not going to harm the customer to just assume it's them for that step only and fully verify their acct later.
If they don't, is that because they don't know any better, or because they actually want to use the IVR?
My guess is either they go straight to a person, or they don't know that's an option. So if I'm correct (and I think the onus would be to prove that old people think differently than everyone else in this regard), these things exist to take advantage of the ignorance of old people to save a company some money. Greaaaat.
"We are sorry our website didn't work, let me get you a human..."
Unpacking it...
Haiku: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_%28operating_system%29
Penguin doll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux
Bearded dude with swords: http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-r...
which is a recursive reference to XKCD: http://xkcd.com/225/
Shibboleet: Shibboleth from Judges 12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
combined with "leet"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet from hacker culture
- Me" "REPRESENTATIIIVE"
- Phone: Sorry, I didn't get that. Say "representative" to talk to an agent
- Me" "REPRESENTATIIIVE"
- Phone: Sorry, I didn't get that. let me transfer you to a representative
(This specific one happens on United calls, every single time.)
Always having to ask for permission is tiring.
I need a machine to take all of the measurements and make decisions entirely without any kind of subjective judgement on my part.
Please, validate my health the same way automated testing and other such diagnostics checks work.
> one two three etc
"Please hold"
"Hello this is agent a, Can I verify your X"
> It's XXXX
"Looks like you have <totally unrelated subject to what you called"
> Yeah but, I called for Y
"Oh ok"
> Y this, Y that, I need Y to do Z
"Let me forward you to an agent that can help you"
"Hello this is Agent Q"
> I need to do Y! damn it I've been on hold and transfering for 20 minutes
"I can help you with Y, but first, I need your account info
> FREAKING A 1234
"Can you verify XYZW?"
> YES GOD DAMN IT YYYY
"Ok sir, I'll need you to FAX it in"
> What, that's technologies from the 1920s
"I'm sorry sir, is there ANYTHING ELSE I can help you out with <condescending voice>"
> PLEASE KILL ME NOW
"Would you like to take a survey?"
a week later, 7pm you get a robo call
"You had a call with Agent X how did that call go"
If its a charge on my credit card or checking, that's what I do, I give them this counter party risk. I call and do a charge back. Basically after 20 minutes with a vendor on hold, I declare that they are being unreasonable and they are unable or unwilling to refund me, I call the bank to do this charge back.
Now, what you tell the bank is critical. For whatever reason, vendors have been able to un-do my chargeback. So instead, I tell the bank that I dispute the charge -- but that I am also disputing the method of payment. So if they argue that the charge is valid in the investigation, I say that is fine -- however, the bank is not authorize on my behalf to pay them, and if they think the charge is authorized they must contact me to arrange a different method of payment. And under no circumstances can they use the bank to make payment. So yeah if they argue the charge is legit, that's fine, contact me (I wish I could put them on hold haha), and I'll pay them -- but the bank can't. The bank likes this because they are off the hook and I like it because they don't get to screw me. Worked every time.
If everyone did this, and made this a huge country party risk, these vendors would stop putting people on hold and ignoring or purposely inadequately addressing their greivences with their product/services.
It’s funny how they never keep their promises of calling you back until you actually stop giving them money. They also magically start paying more attention to what you say, and complaint letters that went unanswered for months and presumed “lost” suddenly become found and answered.
It is probably not the most complex integration technically, but it made the experience so smooth.
So if you know where the thing you're looking for is on the website, you can just launch the website and use that.
Super simple feature but it seems like for so many companies, if you go online, it redirects you to their mobile site which has been "phased out" and tells you to the get their app, which you have and would have used if it had the feature you needed.
For such a "post computer" world it seems ridiculous how often I throw my hands up and find my laptop when trying to complete an online chore from my mobile.
Can't they see what I just typed before? Seriously, how bad can this be.
> when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity
In a sense, this is not unlike an unskilled and nervous attendant who, faced with a request that they don't understand, starts to chatter more and more in hopes of eliciting the information they really need.
[1]: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html
In a sort of sick and very selfish way, I find myself somehow glad that blind and deaf people exist and are protected by accessibility legislation. I've often found accessibility features, particularly those in software, to be exceptionally useful even though my vision and hearing are fine.
The guy you were talking to eventually just routed you to someone with the same job but who has a mic, because you weren't giving him anything to go on and all he'd have been able to do is push the button again to ask you the exact same question (and having a person do it who can at least vary the inflection of the question is less infuriating than seemingly being stuck in a chatbot's infinite loop).
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Source: have a friend who used to have this job. He has thankfully moved on to something less soul sucking than being a human literally pretending to be a robot.
I'd love to know more about these operations, thanks for mentioning this.
I'm just speculating here, but I suspect it means that the employee needs less training. All he needs is a quick flow-chart to route the calls. No training for how to talk to customers, no liability regarding things he might say, etc.
He was glad when he found another job.
Is this practice widespread at all? I've worked at several contact center software companies with many customers and never once heard of this. It's always been automated IVR software controlling this. This sounds to my ears like maybe an outlier of a particularly awful contact center? I'd certainly pause before claiming this is how it works for "many of these systems".
Edit: ahh I can no longer edit it :|
It seems very strange to have a human who can listen but can't speak. I guess these companies think that by removing speech as a possibility, they're able to pay the employee less or something?
With Siri or Google Assistant, you soon figure out few things that this very low intelligence person can do(like telling the weather or setting an alarm) and stick with it.
This is also why I'm excited about iOS12 with all these Siri shortcuts, instead of pretending that we are talking to a smart being let's have a concrete list of things that can do.
On the other hand I do believe that these voice interfaces have some potential, just the technology is not there yet.
When Siri first hit the Iphone and I was trying to figure out if it was useful for me (no), I named my phone Searle[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Chinese_room_thou...
How many times have you called and the prompts go:
Press 1 to talk with sales Press 2 to talk with marketing .... Press 9 to talk to tech support, the only reason anybody dialed this number
Then: Speak your 18 digit account number, being sure to pause between each digit to make sure the computer records it correctly.
Then: Speak your phone number
Then: Speak your 24 digit hexadecimal product code
Finally you get through to a person and 100% of the time they ask you for all of that information again so they can type it in (and get it wrong).
And even when you get a person on the line they make you go back and do all of the stuff you already tried before finally transferring you to someone with half a clue.
a) The backoffice is really shit, broken, and doesn't even display any info (down, badly designed, etc)
b) Backoffice and/or VPN connection from outsourced call center to ISP is really slow, so they work faster by asking info.
c) CRM/Customer database has no consisten quality information, so agents do not trust it.
I may forget something, but those are the most common ones.
Spanish law also require a second ID verification to disclose some information (let's say your wifi password), in our case it's the las 4 digits of the bank account number.
Also to pipeline you into different call centers, because it won't be reasonable to demand agents to know all the tech and commercial info about the company, it's just too much.
The Web was legitimately the next big thing. And after that, mobile. Both of them have changed our lives in deep and lasting ways. But we as an industry are absurdly hungry for the next, next big thing.
How many dumb-ass voice and bot and AI and blockchain projects are there out there now? That basically don't work, but have been shipped anyhow? How many millions of dollars have been wasted? And really I should say billions. Theranos alone burned through $1.2 billion of hype. And there was the wave of "Uber for X" companies, busily failing to replicate the business model of a company whose success still isn't a given.
I should be clear that I'm not opposed to trying new stuff. I'm all for it! But I think if we explore technological possibilities with less flagrant waste, we'll learn more. And be able to explore more.
And as an aside, we haven't really had voice-only interfaces for 100k years. Really, they've only existed since the telephone. What existed previous to that was humans, whose in-person interactions are almost always far more than voice. People have different estimates of the amount of information conveyed in a conversation through expression, gesture, posture, glance, and the like, but it's never a small amount.
My point is that voice is a powerful and ancient channel, and it's about time that computers leverage that channel.
As I said, I'm all for trying new stuff. We should look at the extent to which computers can usefully leverage that channel. But I don't think we should presume that it will be particularly useful.
It's just not true, either. So I end up trying to figure out how to structure my query so the robot on the other end will understand what I want, instead of just saying what I want.
In the end, I just repeat "human" and mash the 0 button over and over until I get a real person to talk to.
They hide key functions behind a 3D Touch, but there's absolutely no discover-ability. So you're either left trying to 3D Touch everything to see what works, or actively researching 3D Touch tricks.
As phone gestures become more popular, they'll have the same issue.
Seriously, watch someone on a new iPhone and it's just painful.
Oh, I created this contact for fun, now how do I delete it. Tap it? Nope. Tap and hold? Nope. Double tap? Nope. Is there a menu somewhere? Nope. Maybe I slide it over? Nope, that brings me back to the previous page. Maybe I pinch? Nope. Guess I'll pull up the help, oh there isn't any. Off to Google then. Oh, I have to slide it over from the middle, not from the edge.
The tipping point for me was when the AT&T small business line I used to use changed to a voice interface and included fake keyboard taping sounds after each interaction. That just felt so damn insulting.
Lately I just say ridiculous shit with these interfaces to see what happens.
A few days ago I was using one for Delta that couldn't tell the difference between "Yeah" and "Yes". Sigh.
In an alternate pinch, licence some item get sounds from vidoegames and do A B testing on customer satisfaction.
Except that with text adventures I was willing to overlook an obtuse parser if I was enjoying the game. I never call my bank just for the fun of it.
The irony, of course, is that research is making strides in NLU, it's just too late for the last wave of chatbots. Here are two recent papers from DeepMind:
Learning to Follow Language Instructions with Adversarial Reward Induction https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01946
Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261
Of the bots that are marketed to be more human with lots of machine learning. From my experience, they feel no more better than the original ELIZA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA) despite the leap in tech.
When I look how my kids interact with Google home it's becomes fairly obvious to me that to them this is completely natural. Google Home is almost like a pet to them not just a tool.
We are finally at a stage where voice recognition starts to become powerful enough to understand nuances now the next question is what to connect them to. One thing that I really like is that it allow us to retrieve information without having to look at a screen. It feels like having a 5th person at the table.
At First Principle, we built a little a voice app that allows you to ask Google Analytics or Salesforce for data (and potentially whatever you want to connect with) for meetings so we can ask instead of having to look up. It becomes a natural part of the conversation and everyone have access to the data.
That's where I think it will first make an impact. In meetings with relevant data.
Oh and this comes along with a modern website that can execute all those use cases too.
But then you throw in the natural language, enabling users to write complex queries in English. That and great funded teams focussing on niches.
My experiences with bots are becoming outstandingly good.
Not perfect but good enough that it provides value.
I now use voice a lot because of the quality with Google tech.
80% success and 20% no action might be usable for an assistant, but adding in 5% random behavior makes it drastically worse than useless.