And there is a feature now to show you how busy a customer service line is at a particular time, and to give you a text transcript with clickable buttons for the phone tree.
If an annoying phone tree is going to take 3 minutes to navigate by listening to the prompts, then it will also take 3 minutes to navigate by letting the AI listen and write little buttons for me.
I didn't really save any time.
If on the other hand it could say "other users have seen this phone tree before, so here is the whole searchable tree with no waiting", that would be a noteworthy feature.
There are probably only ~10,000 phone trees that cover the vast majority of calls in the USA.
If a phone tree is seen by many users and is identical, there is probably no privacy reason not to publish it. Even moreso if the total number of digits typed in quick succession is < 4 (ie. user hasn't entered some password to get in). A human operator could be the final check.
Also, it often prevents me from having to listen to the tree twice, if I am looking for a better option and then decide a previous one was actually the better fit.
If it's a common number for a support line it actually shows you the options before they're stated by the robot. Say for example if I call bank of america's support line, it will show the not-yet-said options as greyed out, but selectable. If the call robot accepts early inputs you can actually navigate a phone menu quite rapidly. Pair that with the estimated wait times or "hold for me" you can save yourself the headache of "actively" waiting.
i Googled that term
looks like it's another name for an IVR menu.
i googled this; looks like it means "Interactive Voice Response" menu, describing automated phone systems where the user navigates a series of options using either their phone buttons or their voice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response
That's what they are called in India, at least, where I live, and where I am from, although the term would not have originated in India, since it would have been brought in by mobile phone companies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response
Although I have a good amount of exposure to, and familiarity, with US terms and slang, due to older relatives up to grandfather level having visited the US for more than short periods, having visited the US myself, and having worked in US-based companies (but in India), the exposure is not complete, that's why I was not familiar with the term phone tree.
That should not be surprising to anyone.
>I'm on the east coast in case its a regional thing,
everyone does not live in the US.
see another reply by me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41251430
Probably because it's just bolting more shit on the ends of a shitty, outdated relic of a system. Like, we have two different computers, one of which is playing back a pre-recorded voice, to a computer which is transcribing that voice into text and buttons, so it can play a generated voice back to the other computer, which will then interpret that voice into text, then perform an action based on that text. The action probably being repeating that process a few more times.
This is remarkably bad. I'm remembering the last time I had to deal with Apple Support. I didn't sit on hold for hours, I told them I needed a call, told them what the issue was, gave a brief summary, and then their support person called me, I was immediately on the phone with a human, she sorted out my problem, and the entire thing took probably 10 minutes tops, including filling out the form.
It feels like these legitimate challenges to businesses to manage their customer service lines, support lines, etc. have actual solutions that:
a) don't require two different damn computers talking over a shitty low-baud connection to one another, and
b) result in a better experience for all parties involved
If they'd just be willing to spend a little goddamn money, like they actually care to provide good service, rather than just paying lip service to it while offering the same garbage system they've offered since the fucking 1970's.
Wrong. These are not challenges. The customer service lines work exactly as designed: as cheap as possible to operate, as effective as possible in preventing majority of the callers from engaging support staff and starting any kind of support process. And the magic, most people who try and fail to get support believe it's their own fault - they're not being patient enough, or persistent enough, or maybe the problem isn't that big a deal, etc.
The companies don't want you to work around the phone tree and hold time. And once most people have tools that are able to, the companies will adjust their support channels to compensate.
Yu are mistaken in assuming businesses want better experiences for everyone, including workflows that may lose them revenue (like cancelations).
The friction is intentional and part of a wider dark pattern strategy employed for "retention" - even Apple does this when one tries to get them to stop an unexpected recurring Apple Music subscription that only shows on ones credit card and nowhere else (apple.com or the Music app). The support number is not provided on amy of the support pages, and ine has to get their bank to stop the outgoing payments. Guess how I know this...
In light of this, I'll gladly take any client-side agent assistance I can get to make to reduce my cognitive burden; the "hold for me" emulates the support agent calling you as you described. , and the experience is more important than implementation details.
I could not understand all the Adobe hate before, but they made a neutral person negative with that experience.