[identity profile] thesawg.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] techrecovery
Sure, people don't like IVRs, but to get you to the right call center it is kind of required.

"For Cable Internet related issues please press one. For Cable TV or billing issues please press two"
This simple choice separates calls from my call center (Internet) and the other call center (billing and CATV). Not the hardest choice in the world. And I am not even bothered by the customer who occasionally make the wrong choice. I can see where the confusion might come in with an internet account billing issues. So, I just transfer them to the billing department. Hey, it helps my call time, I don't care.

Except last night I pick up the phone as as I do on the other forty some odd calls I get in a day I ask for her UserID. And immediately I am being yelled at because I am stupid because she doesn't have one. Once she is done yelling at me for that one she stars to demand I tell her who there is in charge of the ratings for TV programs. I kindly inform her that she has reached the Internet Center and that we just handle issues with the cable internet and not the cable TV and that I can kindly transfer her to Customer Care since it was a Cable TV related issue. But instead she decided to yell at me and call me stupid again because I couldn't answer her question. The she demands to know who is legally in charge or rating the internet. I tell her that the internet is not rated. Then she replies it legally has to be and she wants to know who is in charge at our place for the ratings. I once again explain the internet has no ratings and there is nobody in charge of rating the internet. She says that TV shows have ratings and somebody must be in charge of that at our place. At this point I have to explain to her that the internet is not the same as TV and that I can transfer her to the TV department to answer her question.

Now I am apparently a "total moron" because I don't know who here is "legally in charge of rating TV shows" and she wants to talk to my manager. This is coming from the person who had issues with the one and two button on the phone. She does not believe that she hit the wrong button and knows I know the answer to her question and I am lying to her. I let her know I could transfer her to a supervisor, though he won't know the anwser to the question either, since it is a CATV related question. But she doesn't want my supervisor, she wants the call center manager and she gets even madder to find out that he isn't in. Because you know, at 9PM on a Friday night the one manager of the call center is going to be there. At this point she finally gave up and was willing to be transfered to Customer Care since it is a CATV issue and I am now a "fucking moron" who doesn't know anything. I transfer to the end of a 20 minute queue.


Now I don't know much about cable TV. But I am pretty sure it isn't your cable company that decided the rating on TV shows. But that isn't my job to tell her that. I had to suffer through this idiot, someone at Customer Care needs to as well. My guess it was some cranky mother who uses TV ratings to decide what her precious little kids can watch and got angry when the rating didn't fit her moral believes and somehow her cable company needs to be held legally responsible for this. Either way, I really don't care, I got the retard off my phone and onto someone else's.

Date: 2005-12-03 11:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fnordx.livejournal.com
Sorry, but the first time someone says anything against me personally, I give them their one warning "Sir/Maam, I am trying to help you in a professional manner. If you can not conduct this conversation in a professional manner, I will terminate this call and make a permanent note in your file."

I don't drag myself into work every day to be actively insulted by anyone, let alone someone who can't even figure out how to operate a phone.

Date: 2005-12-03 11:36 am (UTC)
ext_8716: (Default)
From: [identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com
I don't mind pressing (one or two) buttons to get to the right area, but I hate hate hate voice-activated systems with a passion. The first time I encountered one was for phone banking in the UK. Given the fact I'm from NZ, it became a tad challenging. It also hung up on you if you swore at it.

I don't know how companies can justify them, especially somewhere like London, where you have all the accents of the world in that place, not to mention the English varieties. I can't imagine phone system that would understand Geordie.

Sorry about the rant, completely off-topic. Something pushed my buttons... ;-)

Date: 2005-12-03 12:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kayfox.livejournal.com
heh, we have a "voice activated" akak speech recognition system here at Microsoft for the switchboard. Its sometimes entertaining (like saying "[friends first name] blah" and usually getting your friend) but more often frustrating. Combine that with voice compression and its gets a tad bit useless.

Date: 2005-12-03 12:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-s-guy.livejournal.com
Ugh. So many bad memories.

Our IVR script was written by a retard, and our misdirected calls and numbers of confused people has risen around 2000% since it was put in. No-one in our team or any of our bosses has the authority to get it changed and even if they did it would cost us five thousand dollars because instead of using our multibilliondollar organisation's inhouse resources, we're renting space on a system owned by the local telco.

This has been going on for over a year.

Additionally, we get a handful of staff a day who send email to us in error. Most go away when they get a standard reply with my handy-dandy list of IT teams in HQ, what each one does, and how to contact them. But occasionally we get some nutball who keeps mailing us over and over getting pissed that we won't make some blatantly idiotic and horribly complex change to some system we've never heard of, and won't take subtle hints like "Piss off and never email us again, you retarded blob of fungus."

It's more irritating when these people are managers in their own right.

What we tend to eventually do is assign one of our own managers to be responsible for answering anything that comes in from the drooling waste of oxygen, just to avoid half our staff exploding into a homicidal rampage on seeing something in the team mailbox with the name of the brain-damaged slime as the sender. It's the closest compromise we're allowed to come to automatically filtering to /dev/null.

Date: 2005-12-03 01:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] axessdenyd.livejournal.com
Whenever I would have to call in to that crap at MS for Windows activation and it wanted me to read the 60 digit number off, I was incredibly suprised and happy to learn that even though it's undocumented, you can just use the buttons on the phone. So much faster.

It anoyed me that the only way to get a person (in India, naturally) on the line was to enter an invalid number (at least as far as I could tell).

Date: 2005-12-03 01:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] greylady.livejournal.com
I feel your pain. I have a soft voice that humans have a hard time hearing, and I spend more time saying "no" on the voice-recognition lines than a 2 year old who just learned it...

Date: 2005-12-03 02:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] d-l-leonine.livejournal.com
Curious to know what division of Crappy Cable you work at. Over here about, about 3 years ago, cable troubleshooting and HSD tier 1 were merged and it was all downhill from there. The manager of the cable side during the merger had a meeting with the tier 1 agents where he made the statement that "my 8 year old son could do your jobs" (I have more gems from this guy and will work them into my comic over time). Over here in tier 3, I get at least 4-5 transfers per day from those morons in "troubleshooting" for offline or disabled modems. Of course, my co-workers and I have a compiled a list of the ineffective troubleshooters, but the managers aren't really interested. As long as the customers are being moved off the phones, they are happy....

Date: 2005-12-03 03:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ex-deliveryboy.livejournal.com
My company is all about voice activated IVRs and products. It can understand just about any accent as long as the "proper command" is given. Most of the programmers came from Russia, we have techs from Africa and a good number of our customers are from India. (that's a switch aint it) Our software understands them just fine.

But I do hate IVRs that require you to enter an account number that could be 20 digits long and if you don't have the info, there is NO way of reaching anyone live.

Date: 2005-12-03 04:12 pm (UTC)
jecook: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jecook
That's when you find out who their direct report is, and BCC them on it. ::evil grin::

Date: 2005-12-03 04:14 pm (UTC)
jecook: (Default)
From: [personal profile] jecook
IIRC, the producers of the show (or the network they originally air on) decide the intial rating.

Date: 2005-12-03 04:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalium.livejournal.com
An undocumented feature. And it actually works. There's a surprise.

Date: 2005-12-03 08:01 pm (UTC)
jjjiii: It's pug! (Default)
From: [personal profile] jjjiii
"Well, ma'am, do YOU know who rates the internet and television? ... You don't? ... Well, I guess in that case we're BOTH fucking morons! Good bye!"

*click*

Date: 2005-12-03 10:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] axessdenyd.livejournal.com
Surely an oversight

Date: 2005-12-04 03:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-s-guy.livejournal.com
Oh, been there, done that. Sometimes their boss is just as thick. Other times, the boss complains to our manager that we're not providing the expected service (which is WHAT, I'd like to know). Then there's the bosses who are simply too dull to comprehend the problem, and ignore it.
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