Me being a Wisearse...

[canray.livejournal.com]

Back in my phone days, we would have to do the nice, traditional "Get the phone number" from people who have already pressed it in fifteen times (Literally at one job. :-S).

Sometimes, they think I'm just a machine again, and type it in using the phone, so, when that happened, I'd do this:

Me: "Hello, thank you for calling *HELL!*, my name is CanRay, and can I please have your phone number, starting with the area code."

Phone: Boop, boop, beep, bap, bap, bap, bapboobbapbap

Me (In best "Computer Voice"): "Thank you. Now accessing your account. I am sorry, I cannot access your account as I'm a human being and don't speak 'Phone', please speak to me your telephone number starting with the area code."

Most people chuckled or apologised. One person, however, was just too ticked off to realize what I was saying, and just kept punching in the number, three times in a row. I'd had a bad day as well, so followed it up with: "I am sorry, we are unable to bring up your account due to your inability to speak your phone number starting with the area code. Thank you for calling *HELL!*."

Hey, if you're not going to listen to the nice human being when you finally get one, why bother going through the voice mail?

Comments

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I always hate that. I know it's annoying but I nearly always say "Dude, I just gave my phone number to the robot!!" And they say "yeah, but you gotta give it again," or sometimes they say "well, the robot doesn't give it to me," which makes me wonder why the damned thing asked for it.

[canray.livejournal.com]

The Robot System accepts the number for automatic tracking. To see what area who is calling from for record keeping and pattern following. It's also why you have to go through all the prompts, yet can only end up in two places (Typically Sales and Tech Support/Billing.).

If a bunch of people from the same area call due to "No Service" the machine can eventually figure out, "HEY! There's an OUTAGE!" and automatically declair it.

This, however, typically doesn't work, and we're stuck trying to explain to people that while we're booking the appointment for three months in advance, it's going to be fixed a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe.

Sometimes the Robots do transfer it to the monkey on the phone, sometimes it doesn't.

I think the times that it doesn't are sure signs you've just been outsourced.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

The real question is why they ask for it in the first place. Atleast for 1-800 numbers they automatically get your true phone # through ANI anyway.

But yeah it bugs me when I have to repeat something (like a Dell service code) to the tech support dude after I type it for their phone system.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Where you're phoning from doesn't mean where your account is.

The number of calls I got from people at work, at other houses, and so on.

It also doesn't include people who only use a Cell Phone.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

True.

The thing about dell's line still bugs me though. They have this nice little alphanumeric service tag for everything. Except the automated portion of the support line, that needs this other bigger number cause the phone can't do letters very easily.

[jecook]

Iirc, dell created the express service code in order for people to put the equivilent of the service tag into their system. The system then routes the call to the appropriate queue for their system (laptops, servers, desktops, etc.)
At one point, I had actually figured out the algorythm that was used to generate the code.

I just use their web site instead of calling any more, because I can generally explain things better via email or via the chat thing-y.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

I always used the phone cause then no one could call me during the time I was on hold.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I always used the phone cause then no one could call me during the time I was on hold.

Enlightenment!