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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

It's like how these automated call handlers that say "Just tell us what you need help with" and then no matter how you phrase the sentence it just doesn't understand what you mean. Great idea in theory, horrendous execution. Bonus points if it automatically disconnects after 3 attempts without finding the right magic word from its dictionary of options.

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The answer I always give to "tell us what you need help with" is "representative" or "speak to a human". I despise the automated systems that respond to that with "before we can route you to a human, we need to know what you're calling about". Fortunately, some of those will take the continued statement of "representative" as a sign that they should give up and give you a human to talk to. Not all of them, though.

Have you encountered those voicemail AI customer service representatives? Those can't route you anywhere so you're stuck talking to a robot.

I was just trying to schedule my daughter's dentist appointment and had to spend 10 minutes talking to an AI when I could have found a time that worked in 30 seconds with a human. And at the end of the whole process, she got my daughter's name wrong. It was demoralizing.

I have yet to encounter a phone system that refuses to provide a human, at least within business hours. But I've encountered those online, definitely, that aggressively want to hide any way to reach a person for something that you know in advance will be outside their script.

This one rings until it's about to go to voicemail, and then all of a sudden a fake dial tone starts and an AI agent picks up. I've only encountered this type for small business owners, like dentist offices and lawyers. But it doesn't seem like there is a way to reach the actual person. I could be wrong though.

I've hit phone trees with no path to a human. Haven't gotten stuck on an AI yet, but I'm sure it will happen. The AIs never have the ability to resolve the odd cases.

Jetblue wouldn't let me talk to a human unless I agreed to pay $25.

Most phone systems will put you through to a human if you pound the 0 enough. The better ones will tell the rep that you did so and they know you are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore and you never have to make the case that they’re going to lose $100,000 NPV because they won’t give you a $500 resolution.

Some of them will also give up and escalate if you do a good enough Rahm Emanuel impression.

Oh fucking hell yes, how much I hate that shit. Bring back the "press 5 for XYZ" phone trees, I never have problems getting the systems to understand what I'm trying to indicate there.

I definitely prefer phone trees the ai agents. Something that has never made sense to me is why we even need most of the phone trees. Could they not just have separate numbers? Billing is X num. CS is Y num. Save the human species minutes for every fucking call.

I realize the decision makers have been prioritizing the opposite. Making calls take as long as possible but I have no idea what is incentivizing them to do that.

They're just filters to see if you actually need help. "They're willing to sit here for 4 minutes listening to prompts and hitting buttons, they must need help" because as we all know, in most cases it doesn't matter which sequence of numbers you press, the same person is going to answer the phone, or same group of people.

Honestly, sometimes I just hit buttons till I get a human on the line...

> Could they not just have separate numbers?

That's what they actually are, you just get an interactive type through for selecting your number. You can just type it all at once if you already know it.

Phone numbers cost money, and customers now have to look up 5 different numbers and will inevitably call the wrong number…. Have to wait, get the right number, then call and wait again?

I would love to see an app/overlay that displays what each option is during the call. Some system where you don’t have to listen to the whole list of “press x for y”.

I have no idea how to go about implementing such a thing, but it would be cool if someone picked up the idea and ran with it.

Android does this fairly well for me - it will list out the options as they are spoken, and you can click on them directly to type the number. I believe (but haven't seen this recently) it will pre-render the options before they are read if it has knowledge of that phone tree.

But watch out, as our menu options have recently changed!

Good point, but seriously why are the menu options so frequently changing?? (or is that just more BS to delay you further)

If you've not used a commercial IVR stack before, most of them are at least semi-integrable with major CRM's while being implemented as a combo of Finite State Machines and Automated Voice Recognition systems intended to be used for customer facing data entry to originate tickets or entries for Call Center workers. The issue though, is most of those workers are minimally trained in ultra rigid scripts, and the market sees those people as a cost center, so most places do everything they can to minimize the layout to operate. The time I was in charge of one, I bent over backwards, including learning the Vendors tool, and telling them to hands off, in order to get our call center experience tolerable. I wasn't even officially part of the Call Center department, but the guy implementing it was doing so horribly it became a hot button issue that escalated it's way up to me.

Since the experience, I have grown increasingly hostile to most "Automated customer Support Systems". (Capitalization intentional). The intent is generally to minimize the human contact available to the customer.

It's ASS all the way down. The customer has very little choice or input in the matter.

It's always BS IME.

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