Hacker News Reader

Comment by nordsieck | Hacker News Reader

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs.

This one really puzzles me.

Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Either I'm missing something that it's a lot better for some group(s) of people, or people adopted it because of promises that failed to materialize.

View on HN

It exists to hide the fact that companies took a page out of Google's book and forewent customer service altogether.

This is more befuddling - they are replacing one automated system (button driven) with a worse automated system (voice driven). No one wins unless you still have a rotary phone.

A SaaS that sells voice-driven customer support wins.

A manager with misaligned incentives that reduced call center costs by 50% and got promoted also wins.

The secret here is that for the majority of companies, the goal is not to support you as a customer effectively, but to rather minimize the amount of time spent organization wide supporting ALL customers. So to that end the automated systems are about frustrating customers to the point that they'll just "Go away" and the voice based systems are more frustrating than the button based ones, and infinitely more frustrating than actually talking to a human being who can actually help you, so it's a win for the majority of companies that just view customer service as a cost centre to be minimized, and it's a win for the SAAS companies that sell these useless, irritating and anti-consumer systems.

I've wondered why companies don't auction top places in line. If they're going to have people queuing, why not attempt to extract some money from them? Implementing such a system and selling it seems like a possible business idea for someone who believes this is a nicely utilitarian solution.

I agree, I like it but a lot of customers will feel nickel and dimed even if they never pay for it.

It doesn't matter that much because the human on the other side is not provided with the tools and information needed to help you.

Customer service, be it commercial or tech support, is always treated horribly.

Yes, it's what rfwhyte said. It's literally an externality to the company that people get inconvenienced for hours on understaffed phone lines and end up losing out on money, returns, support, etc. They benefit by reducing overhead and making the support innavigable (thus reducing successful returns/support overhead), you pay the cost with hundreds of hours of your life on hold.

Phone trees are deliberately bad, so I assume voice recognition is deliberately worse. The goal is to frustrate nusance customers so that they give up.

What is so frustrating to me is how they could simply offer email/ticket based support so much easier and cheaper for most issues. And yet so many companies do not even have the option. I've been dealing with a home warranty company and they have an online portal where you can see the status of a claim. But if you click that you need help or to resolve an issue, it just gives you a popup to call their 800 number. Then you have to climb through a phone tree for 10 minutes until being told that they are experiencing higher than usual call volume and then wait on hold for 45 minutes. All for simple issues that could be handled through email. My only guess is that they don't want the paper trail of their terrible customer service.

It took a global pandemic for the California DMV to finally start an email ticket system. It is hands down so much better than going in to the DMV and has to be way more efficient for them. You simply fill out a form and you get an email with a ticket number. They respond within 3 business days asking you to send images of documents or whatever is missing. A comparatively pleasant experience.

> email/ticket based support

This would provide the customer with a written record which could be used against the corporation. Phone is generally favorable to the corporations because the corporation can decide whether/how to retain/destroy records, but the customer will almost never have a transcript or recording to use for their own evidence.

Many corporations have moved to a system where you can either call an automated line which does its best to make you hang up...or you can fill out a browser form which provides the customer no ticket/confirmation number/email/any record that you ever filled it out.

Time for legislation around this. Email support must be an option, and ticket confirmation record must be provided.

Pretty sure that it very noticeably results in lower costs. People often literally cannot figure out how to get through the voice recognition system to reach a human customer support person.

So the companies save money by then cutting the size of their call centers.

Agreed. These days though I tend to just mash 0 repeatedly and say the word "representative".

There've been some attempts at apps which navigate phone trees until they get a person or secure a callback for you. Not sure what the state of those is these days.

This is my default as well (although I use "talk to a human") but increasingly it results in the automated phone system hanging up on me if I dont at least navigate halfway through the bullshit first.

I just keep pressing 0 until a live person answers.

I double down and press 0 while shouting "Agent!"

there’s a rumour that cursing can also help you get to the operator (faster?). not sure how true that is, though

"Representative! ... Representative! ... Representative!"

You should automate that.

If too many people do that they will turn it off, just a few representatives cannot handle such inflow of requests. The problem is skimping on customer service personnel.

I could see it saying "I understand you want to reach customer representative", "Please select from these options while I connect you to a representative" while circling you around a graph of options or just automatically hanging up after 45 minutes to an hour of being on the call.

What you've described is something I've directly experienced. There are phone systems that will do just that when you ask for an operator.

I think that's old fashioned. Newer systems I've dealt with just say "sorry, I can't understand you, please try again later" and hang up.

Related to this, I've had to call an airline and get told the queue is too long and to try calling back later. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea to implement because the queue will always be super long.

> Related to this, I've had to call an airline and get told the queue is too long and to try calling back later. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea to implement because the queue will always be super long.

It's 100% internal metrics.

When I was in the military, there was some metric that the clinic was graded on - I think it was number of days between when an appointment was made and when the visit happened. So the clinics just didn't allow unimportant people to make appointments more than 2 weeks out.

I’m happy enough if they just straight up say you’ll be waiting a while, and to press a button to get a call back when you reach the top of the queue.

Can get on with life until they ring you back then.

the best is when the queue is too long and they let you opt-in to being called back when it's your turn.

> get told the queue is too long and to try calling back later. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea to implement because the queue will always be super long.

A call deferred is a call denied.

Convincing the customer to give up is one way to reduce workload.

See also: automated systems that play a prerecorded message along the lines of "we're currently experiencing higher than normal call volume" regardless of how long wait times even are.

I once heard that in some countries you can just keep repeating "what" and they're legally bound to forward you to a human agent. Something about accessibility laws in case you don't know how to type numbers or can't understand what the voice wants (hearing aids or handicapped people)... Can't find the reference though.

Some months ago I was trying to setup a medical appointment for my dad when the robo-voice picked up I got frustrated and shouted "kurwa" (an universal swearword in Polish). The automaton responded "I understand, connecting you to our consultants".

That is amazing. I'm going to try this.

Shouting "operator" or "I want to speak to a human" in your loudest, most karen-like voice, also seems to work.

On the latest systems this often results in the automated system hanging up on you.

This feature has nothing to do with lower costs and everything to do with the management chain in customer service taking a victory lap for adding voice recognition to the phone tree. Lowering cost is certainly how they justify it, and they also just get credit for being modern and keeping their systems up to date with current trends. The actual reality of whether it actually saves anything or has any positive benefit is immeasurable and irrelevant.

Both were pretty bad. Even when I know I want something that should be easy I often cannot find it. Thing like account balance are just to hard to get - and then instead of a balance they finally give me a long set of numbers that include balance, but also the last payment, last 10 charges... Thus making it take too long to get what I really want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com