What were they thinking?

[ewx]

UPS's automated pickup telephone line asks you to speak your telephone number. (And then doesn't recognize it and passes you on to a human who asks for your telephone number again, but that's another story.)

Comments

[pm215]

Maybe they were thinking "pulse dialing phones"? Southern Electric's meter-reading line at least has a stage where it asks you to press '*' so it can separate those who have to speak their number from the rest of us. (It ought to be fairly easy to recognise speech in such a limited domain -- it's one of the standard research cases, I think.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I should add that I'd already been through a few levels of “if you have a silly hat, press 1” so I don't think that can be it.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

You're missing the point: automated call-answering systems exist to reduce the standard of customer service. At best, they exist as a kind of rationing or queueing system to buffer the arrival rate of enquiries.

Mostly, people will accept a low-cost substitute for the personal touch of speaking to an operator, providing it works.

At worst, call systems exist as deliberate barrier between the company and a group of people they regard with contempt.

A harsh judgement? Where a bad point-of-contact system exists, it is certain that the people who ordered it (usually accountants looking for cost savings) and the people who implemented it (IT and HR) are far, far more powerful within the organisation than anyone who acts as an advocate for cusomers, clients, or the public.

You might want to ask what that says about the company, and your choice to do business with them. Ask if there a reputable firm of couriers you can send to pick up the parcel from there depot on your behalf so that you can guarantee delivery.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

i think they're fairly sensible things for routing and basic data capture, and don't mind interacting with them for that. Modern voice recognition has always worked for me when I used it over the phone (when I say it didn't recognize the number, I mean it understood what I said, it just didn't find that number in its database) which, albeit still with relatively a small sample size, is a better hit rate than me talking to data-capturing humans.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I assumed it didn't parse it. If it works, I can't actually criticise, voice and keyboard are probably about as quick for this.

And voice recognition is probably fairly good where there's only 1n things you can say. But keypad is perfect, so I'm shocked they went the other way.

For that matter, shouldn't they know where you're calling from anyway? :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

They may well not have had the number of my phone since it's inside work's exchange. In any case I might (for instance) prefer to be called on a different number from the one I was calling from.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It shouldn't rely on it. But it'd be a nice twiddle for it to say "Enter your phone number or press # to use [your number]" if it can.

[fanf]

In many cases these systems will also accept DTMF input.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Yeah right, like there's a better way of entering phone numbers over the telephone? Pfft!