That's why I've been super annoyed when companies started using speech recognition robots, and are trying to force customers to talk to them. "Please tell us why you are calling. You can say anything!".
Sometimes it helps to give it the silent treatment. Let it ask 3 times, don't wear out your voice or raise your diastolic, and then maybe you're transferred to an intelligent prison inmate.
Or just as bad, “You can say things like [10 year pause] x, y or z” All of which are trivial tasks I could have done in 5 seconds online and I would never and am not calling about. If I’m calling by definition it’s a special situation. Put a fucking human on the phone, now. Nothing makes me so angry so fast as these IVR mazes.
What you have to understand is the far more common median case of some boomer that steadfastly refuses to use a web interface under any circumstance and would rather just call up and ask about any old trivial thing. For that scenario, translating the web interface into interactive-call-robot interface solves every problem and makes everyone happy.
What I see is that these companies would be happy to waste 1000 hours of customers' time to save themselves $5. So even if the useful cases of the IVR/automation is rare, it's still a net win from their perspective. Especially in markets (most of them) where it's not going to be a competitive difference because they all do it.
The insult to injury is the prerecorded "Your call is important to us" Yeah I'm sure it is, that's why you have a nearly-zero-cost robot telling me that while you put me on hold because you didn't want to hire an adequate numbers of reps, right?
Here's a magic summoning spell for you. It must be said with intent and sufficient pause between the three incantations for letting your voice echo through the aether. With enough fortitude, the seal will be broken and a kindred spirit will emerge:
I understood the nominative determinism of this service after 2 hours on the first server I found. I did not hesitate to destroy my account soon after, and I haven't looked back. I am fairly confident that the authors worship Eris.
So this is how it begins, with mild annoyances. It will be a sad day when we stop being annoyed and simply know that we should answer however it wants us to.
Probably they have articles "on the heap" for filling or summer or something, which they are now cranking out for click numbers. Maybe also a bit of chatGPT
Am I the only one that doesn’t think these look hard to solve? It shows you an example of what it’s looking for, who cares what word it uses to describe that thing, can’t you just pick the similar pictures?
The 'click on the middle of the bear's nose' hCaptchas were an improvement, but they only seemed to happen for a week or so, now we're back to the AI garbage pile.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 79.2 ms ] threadPersonal computers have been around for longer than young people have been alive.
If you're in your twenties, you can't possibly have forty years of experience using computers.
Not every oldster was using computers and smartphones as soon as they could, but the ones that were increasingly tip the balance.
The insult to injury is the prerecorded "Your call is important to us" Yeah I'm sure it is, that's why you have a nearly-zero-cost robot telling me that while you put me on hold because you didn't want to hire an adequate numbers of reps, right?
"Llaiw Æhgynt. Llaiw Æhgynt. Llaiw Æhgynt"
https://xkcd.com/2657/
- Please click each image containing a Yoko
Ono.