Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Automated voice services
Did you ever have to call customer service for a question about a problem with a product? Did you ever get the automated voice that asks you to answer yes or no? I have and I hate them. After hearing the guest speaker from Nuance talk about how they decide on what voices to use and how they are working on making these automated services better, I thought "Yes that would be great." I called Sony once about an mp3 player I had, and I had to continually yell yes into the phone. The automated service didn't pick up my voice or the answer at all, and I got so frustrated that I just hung up the phone. All I wanted to do was talk to a representative and it made me say my model number about 5 times before it was repeated back to me correctly, then I had to answer all these other questions about the product like when I purchased it and from where. I felt like a broken record with how many times I had to yell repeatedly at the phone. I looked on the Nuance website and they seem very technologically advanced and all about helping the customer. They want to make people happy with their services. The easier they make things, the better for all of us, don't you think? I also found it interesting that she spoke about how much consideration goes into the voices of all the automated systems. It's amazing how much time is put into an annoying voice that most people don't want to hear. In the future, the voices may become less annoying to New Yorkers on the train during rush hour, but as of right now, (in my opinion) they will always be annoying.
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4 comments:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I put the title as a link to the Nuance website.
i actually like those machines sometimes,because they do what people don't, which is get to the point. i remember when i had to cancel my aol back when they gave cds out the person, tried there hardest to not let me cancel and made it something i didn't want to do. i think right now its really a young stage for voice recognition, but it is really promising.
i for one cannot stand calling a bank, cell phone service provider or any other large business and getting an automated message with voice recognition. i usually try to be guided through various questions by the message for a little and then get so frustrated i just start yelling "operator!" or press random numbers in hopes of speaking to a real person. it usually works.
after the guest speaker last week, appreciate the concept of automated voice services more and understand that a lot more goes into it than meets the naked ear. all the same, those things are annoying and don't tend to work very well. i am glad that companies like nuance are trying to improve these services and i hope they do soon.
Well in my opinion nowadays operators are not much of a difference from the automated answering machines. After struggling with the answering machines during 30 minutes, selecting the right choice from a variety of selections AND subselections, you actually get in contact with an operator that tells you, "let me put you in contact with someone that can help". After that, you have to listen to a constantly replaying 15 seconds melody which gets frustrating in its 3rd loop. So in my opinion nowadays operators are not that different from answering machines.
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