ie8 fix

Virtually Speaking

Dan Kusnetzky, Paula Rooney and Ken Hess

Why do suppliers rely on voice reponse systems?

By | January 4, 2010, 2:00am PST

Summary: Voice response systems often equal bad customer service.

More often than I would like, I am faced with the need to contact a company to get information or resolve an issue.  On rare occasions, I find that I’m speaking with a well-trained, helpful customer service representative. More likely, I’ll face an unresponsive, unhelpful, stupid voice response system. Most of the time, the company I wish to contact offers no simple easy way to speak with a person.

Most of my experiences with these systems are bad ones.  They simply don’t understand my midwestern twang and try to lead me to a function I’m not interested i.n at all.  Trying to get something fairly simple accomplished turns into a frustrating, blood pressure elevating experience. I have found that the chat “representative, representative, representative” eventually confuses the voice response system enough that I’m forwarded to a person who can actually help me.  Sometimes, the system will simply ask me to call again and hang up on me. When that happens, I simply purchase the desired product or service from some other supplier.

I’ve had experiences along these lines with AT&T Wireless, Comcast, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines (now part of Delta)  and a few other institutions. The most recent experience was with AMC Entertainment’s system.

Other times, I find myself speaking with someone who clearly speaks English as a second or, perhaps, third language. This, of course, makes it very difficult to understand them or be understood by them. In the end, these experiences often are very irritating and diminish my view of these suppliers. Dell and HP are the poster children for these types of issues. More often than not, I end up calling several times, sending several Email messages or using their “chat with an overworked, obviously bored tech” systems.

Some companies, such as Amazon.com, AOL.com and eBay.com make it just about impossible to even find a telephone number at all. I guess they feel that they’re doing well enough generally to anger some people.

I’ve come to the conclusion that cost cutting is more important to these firms than good customer service. I guess that they don’t realize or don’t care how often irritated or angry people tell others about their bad service experiences.

Have you had similar experiences? What have you done about it when faced with this type of problem?

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Daniel Kusnetzky is a distinguished analyst and the founder of the Kusnetzky Group LLC.

Disclosure

Dan Kusnetzky

The Kusnetzky Group LLC is an independent technology industry research firm that focuses on system software, virtualization and cloud computing technology.

Dan's opinions are based upon research, personal experiences and actual use of technology. They are not based upon the relationships the company may or may not have with suppliers, end user organizations, the media, consultants or other analysts.

Dan's research is available on a subscription basis through the Kusnetzky Group LLC. Dan's attendance at industry events or at client meetings may be sponsored by the client. Clients may provide hardware or software for testing prior to the publication of analysis that includes that product. Clients may also provide shirts, jackets, coffee cups, folders, backpacks, pens and other event chotchkies. While nice, these don't effect Dan's opinions or insight about those clients or their products.

Biography

Dan Kusnetzky

Daniel Kusnetzky, Analyst and Founder of Kusnetzky Group LLC, is responsible for research, publications, and operations. Mr. Kusnetzky has been involved with information technology since the late 1970s. Mr. Kusnetzky has been responsible for research operations at the 451 Group; corporate and marketing strategy for Open-Xchange; system software and virtualization research at IDC; and program and product management at Digital Equipment Corporation.; Today, Mr. Kusnetzky focuses on system software, virtualization technology and cloud computing.

Related Discussions on TechRepublic

Did you know you can take part in these discussions with your ZDNet membership?
31
Comments

Join the conversation!

Just In

It's Almost Unanimous
Legal_Beagle 5th Jan 2010
If one is forced to respond or the system hangs up on you, then pressing numbers is a good second choice. Mostly, I just sit there like a (silent) bump on a log, waiting for the bleeping machine to give up and put me through to a person. My personal "worst" is the system that requires you to enter your account number, your PIN, the model and serial number of the product that you are calling about, then finally gets you to a live person who asks "What is your account number? Your name? The model and serial number of the product?" I mean, why did I just go through all of that stuff entering all of that data, just to be asked the same stuff by the live representative?
0 Votes
+ -
Just give us the "economic recovery" money. The tax payers "don't know nothin bout runnin a business"!
Ron Paul is correct.
Price Gouging should be "LEGAL"!
Unless we have a "sub-prime customer service" melt down nothing will probably change.
This is like wishing for the "good old days when women were like our mothers"!
It'll never happen.
I stop using companies, wherever possible, that have too many automated systems for phone response instead of being able to get to a real human. Outsourcing support seems to be a cost saver to many companies but in the end backfires often when their customer base finds comparable products with real live people that actually work for the company and know their products. While consumers may be treated as the cash cows to be milked or sheep to be shorn, consumers wise up and the internet allows consumers voice. Beware the blogger who has a bad experience all of the blogs followers will learn of it and the PR nightmare will begin...
0 Votes
+ -
I think they use it so that when you're using your cell w/ a bluetooth device you don't need to have the cell out. I personally appreciate voice response, especially when i'm calling a vendor from my cell via bluetooth and have never had "bad service" strictly due to voice vs touch-tone prompts.
0 Votes
+ -
Coustomer Service
kb42930 4th Jan 2010
You must be an angle and God is looking after you. The rest of us have to go through hell to understand them and them to get help from coustomer service.
0 Votes
+ -
Angle??
BigJohnLg 4th Jan 2010
Is he a 45 deg angle?
I think you meant angel.
0 Votes
+ -
Cost effective
sboverie 4th Jan 2010
Companies use voice response systems because it saves them money. As pointed out in the article, this leaves a lot to be desire.

Good customer service is extremely rare. I experienced good service with one aspect of a company only to find incredibly poor service from their customer relations service. The company does well 90% of the time in doing their service but for those 10% exceptions the customer service is horrible. Talking to a customer rep is like talking to a robot, they do not try to actually do things that would be helpful and they tend to be unapologetic even while saying "I'm sorry".

Good customer skills include the ability to be emphathetic to the customer's distress without getting involved in their distress. Good listening skills to determine what the problem is as described by the customer.
0 Votes
+ -
cost effective yields fewer customers
common sense 4th Jan 2010
Rather than just go to a different company I will often try to get to human to tell them WHY I'm not giving them my money. Also summed up at Despair, Inc: http://despair.com/ap24x30prin.html
0 Votes
+ -
If it angers your customers and drives them to other suppliers, how does it save them money?
0 Votes
+ -
Good software, good tutorials, and good English-fluent customer service would make more money than these short-sighted bozos save on cheap union-resistant overseas wages.

And those blogs? My favorite had a post swearing (and I am not making this up) that you can get a fluent English speaker by requesting the Spanish option. These CSR's are fluently bilingual. Just proves that these companies will hire from any country which does not provide their primary customer base. Why aren't we showing some good consumer solidarity on this issue?
0 Votes
+ -
Lumping 2 issues together
colinnwn 4th Jan 2010
I think you are conflating being able to call a company (something I don't particularly care about) with the ability to contact a company and receive good customer service.

For example, Amazon makes it easy to figure out how to email the company. In my experience their customer service reps resolve the problem quickly and favorably. I've never had a problem with Amazon, and I don't care if they don't publish or make it hard to find their phone number.

Email communication is so much more convenient and efficient than telephone anyway. You don't have to wait on hold for a rep. If English is their second language, and they are otherwise technically competent, there is no accent to struggle understanding. Everything is documented in writing in case of future problems. And you can look at their response and address it as required at your personal convenience.

Ebay and Paypal on the other hand have their support pages set up to require you to look at their FAQs (when you know they don't help) before you are allowed to submit a question. It usually isn't even obvious how to contact them at all through their hidden and abysmal form submission system. Their responses in my experience while timely, are not topical, and often do not resolve the problem. It annoys me that they hide how to contact a person through email/chat/telephone, though if they offered telephone support I am not convinced service would be any better.
0 Votes
+ -
I've found that repeatedly pressing '0', even after you get "I'm sorry, that selection was not valid", eventually gets you with someone.

Ever try to get feedback to a problem at Yahoo!? There isn't even an e-mail link. Follow their "Contact Us" links, and all you get is the FAQs and Help pages.
0 Votes
+ -
This is a disruptive smart thing I saw in 2009:

http://umikey.com/en_case_reg.php

To get personalized support online, they combine product registration, member registration with tech support.

The 1st time the user inserts a Umikey, it register the user and the product warranty, etc.

The subsequent Umikey insertions brings you to a support portal of all your purchased items. It also cross-sells vendors' other related products and extended warranties.
0 Votes
+ -
it's YOU! YOU demand the lowest price possible and companies simply respond with logical measures to cut costs. I can't agree more that these stupid recorded answering systems are a sure way to keep me away from that company but realize these 2 facts:

1. you asked for it
2. it will get worse

Worse!? yes, in europe the model is "the customer sucks"; What does that mean? If all companies agree on this, then you have no option to go anywhere to get better service. This has ALWAYS been the way europeans treat each other. If you dare inconvenience or otherwise upset an employee, they will likely give you such a bad time you will regret having let your tongue slip. They will take forever to help you or just argue with you until you leave. We are headed this way folks.
0 Votes
+ -
Not European
SpectreWriter 4th Jan 2010
I don't know where you get YOUR info from,
Alex, but generally Europeans are the model of
customer service. Canada also blows us away in
that department. I can tell (by more than the
accent) when a company has hired out CS to
Canadians. How? They're warm, pleasant,
polite, capable, and want to resolve your
problem. Europe invented customer service.
But that doesn't mean they (or anyone else)
will subject themselves to verbal abuse because
you're having a bad day.
I do the only thing you can do when confronted with a
computer that refuses to help; stop doing business with
the company. The same applies to offshore support. I used
to be exclusively Dell until quite a few years ago they
sent tech support to India. Now I buy other brands, but I
haven't experienced that problem with HP. So far I've
been connected quickly to someone who not only speaks and
understands English but also is knowledgeable.
0 Votes
+ -
They do it on purpose
SpectreWriter 4th Jan 2010
I'm convinced that the systems are INTENDED to be
annoying. What these companies want us to do is to
take what they deign to give us, shut up and like it,
and order it again. Why do I say that? Because the
very LAST option, after a slew of inane and
inapplicable choices (which one must listen to closely
as their menu may have changed)MIGHT lead to a live
human being -- eventually.

Representative, Associate, LIVE HUMAN BEING, YOU
STUPID F***ING MACHINE!, and several other comments
have been attempted. Sometimes, annoying as it is,
just not replying at all works. Other times, the
system decides you're not there and just hangs up on
you.

The bottom line is that those companies do not respect
the value of our time. They'll insist that we go to
www-dot-blah-blah-blah-forward-slash-blah-blah-
blahbity-blah... assuming that we haven't already done
so, or that we all have the Internet in our hands when
we're phoning with a problem. Perhaps their arrogance
extends to the belief that their online pages are so
well done that they cover all contingencies. I don't
know, and I don't care.

I've wasted many hours of my life each year on such
systems. Problems with my cell phone take up more of
my time than all other aspects of my business
combined. (No, I'm NOT exaggerating, which is why I'm
tolerating a Rumour II that doesn't recognize the
micro-SD-RAM card most of the time and features
backspace keys that stick (both of them, bad coding.)
After 14+ hours spent on 3 phones, I've given up on
fixing the hardware issues. It's faster to retype the
message than to phone them and get another unit that
has other problems. Why am I still with Virgin?
Because they're still there trying to work it out,
too. Because they get me to a human faster than most.
Because the other providers (if that isn't an
oxymoron) are far worse... and finally, because I've
been beat into submission.

To hire a human being to answer the phones politely,
intelligently and effectively would cost them more in
terms of overhead, and lose them a lot less customers.
But they don't recognize that. They just blame it on
the economy or somesuch. They're too disrespectful of
their customers to even imagine that it might be them.
0 Votes
+ -
A partial solution
Danny Carlton 4th Jan 2010
With every single voice system I've encountered, if you count the options and press the number corresponding to its place in the list, it accepts that as the selection.

For example if it says, "For sales say 'sales', for support say 'support'" you press "2" and it'll accept that as saying support.

Personally I refuse to speak to machines (that includes answering machines). It's degrading and insulting.
0 Votes
+ -
Hope you make an exception for SMB
mheartwood 4th Jan 2010
I'm pretty much a one woman business. I have an answering machine because most of the time, I'm out of the office and working on-site. Cell phone service in my area is mostly non-existant although with the new tower, if I climb the church steps at the end of the block, I can get service.

I always answer my email.

But when people usually want to call me, it's because their email isn't working.

So when you get an answering machine, just say your name, phone number, and what the problem is. If you do like my clients, it goes like this "This is Jane Doe. 432-9876. My Email doesn't work. ".
0 Votes
+ -
It's Almost Unanimous
Legal_Beagle 5th Jan 2010
If one is forced to respond or the system hangs up on you, then pressing numbers is a good second choice. Mostly, I just sit there like a (silent) bump on a log, waiting for the bleeping machine to give up and put me through to a person. My personal "worst" is the system that requires you to enter your account number, your PIN, the model and serial number of the product that you are calling about, then finally gets you to a live person who asks "What is your account number? Your name? The model and serial number of the product?" I mean, why did I just go through all of that stuff entering all of that data, just to be asked the same stuff by the live representative?
0 Votes
+ -
Live CS Referral Site?
SpectreWriter 4th Jan 2010
Maybe it's time to make the access to live Customer
Service a criteria. If there were an up-to-date place to
check on what to expect if there's a problem, I'd
frequent it before buying goods or services.
0 Votes
+ -
Well, it all revolves around what you do...
mikifinaz1@... 4th Jan 2010
One of the bad habits of most people is sloth, or taking the path of least resistance. All the big suppliers are betting that you won't reach out of your comfort zone and give them the boot. I can deal with honesty, if a supplier says that they will get me the best price (and do) and tell me no customer service fine. I take my chances.

The problem is that many of these suppliers intimate (through ads etc.) that they are kinder and gentler, but when you read the fine print or show up with a problem you get shafted.

Dell is a perfect example.

You don't even want to hear about a Dell issue I had that took virtually an act of God to fix. This incident was instrumental in my re-evaluating how I buy things. Good thing I am retired, I had the time (months) and connections (retired consultant in the computer industry) to get behind the circular help calls to get a VP to help me and even then I had to twist his arm to get what they minimally agreed to contractually with me as a customer.

I have decided to replace any product or service where I don't get the treatment I deserve as a customer. I will go through what is necessary to get the treatment I should get for giving them my money. Part of any product is dealing with customers.

I am tired of Microsoft so I am learning Linux to replace Microsoft. If I am going to get bad treatment I might as well get it for free. Linux geeks can be a pain. I am keeping my macs because I am not only getting a better out of the box experience, but better service. At least with Linux I get well meaning attempts to help and often end up with a solution.

I am dumping HP and Dell except in rare situations for emachine and I am dumping all of them as situations arise for a local PC shop.

I will explain. For three hundred plus bucks I got a box (PC only) from emachine with Win 7 64 bit premium, dual processor, with twice the RAM (6 GB) and twice the hard drive (750 GB). I called HP and Dell to see what I could get. Dell and HP couldn't even touch this for less than 5 to 6 hundred dollars and emachine doesn't promise gold plated service. I will make that trade off.

If I want service I buy locally with local merchants where I can put the screws to them if they don't meet their side of the agreement. I am following this general path for everything from A to Z.
When I have an option, I switch to a company that at least
pretends to care.
What I find REALLY annoying is voice response systems that call me and expect me to listen through a canned message or hold the line while they get a live person to talk to me. I've never listeded long enough to find out whether it's a bill collector, telemarketer, or public service announcement. I don't have time for it.
0 Votes
+ -
Fun with bill collectors
balictous-zdnet@... 4th Jan 2010
Ditto on your reactions.

Recently told the collector I just had a settlement of $10k and was ready to pay his bill.

Didn't use my real name. No, I didn't know my acct number. Nor the phone number they listed me under.

But if he didn't want my money I had others I owed big sums.

Collector was crying. Big commission flying out the window.

Fun
I absolutely HATE those stupid IVR systems. They might qualify as the worst invention of the decade. Stupid things don't understand me, and then try dealing with one while there are 4 kids making noise in your house. Impossible! The local cable company drove me mad with theirs. 10 different options to pay your bill now, pay it later, schedule a payment, make payment arrangements, etc and 1 option for tech support. Select tech support and you're presented with more choices about paying your damned bill!!! Knuckleheads! DirecTV isn't much better, but at least I can get a human there.

Anyway, here is a website on how to talk to people at various companies:

http://gethuman.com/

With the power of the internet we should be able to work together and eliminate these IVR systems from existence.
I realize that "Time is money" but if you are going to
call me at least have the courtesy to be on the phone
when I pick it up. If I get a call placed by computer,
I don't care who it is that's calling, I just hang up the
phone.
HERE HERE i JUST HANG UP AND TAKE MY BUSS ELSEWHERE!!!!!!
0 Votes
+ -
Pretty Ironinc to see this on a Tech web page. Ok that said--I hate those systems, which reminds me I should of dumped my health insurance company for they have a TERRIBLE system and I shared this with a family member and employee of that company. She agrees. But what a lot of these companies figure that their product is so much in demand that they are willing to give us lousy service. I hope this is the decade where we, the consumer, take action and start speaking with our $$$$$$$$$.
0 Votes
+ -
Too many options
Narg 4th Jan 2010
Along with poor voice automation, is the menus that go on and on and on and on with so many options that most are reptitive or 100% useless.
I persists because it is tolerated. Most companies are totally detached from their product "concentrating on their core mission". What that means is that a company might design some of their stuff in house, but mostly what they do is churn paper while they outsource their design, manufacturing, distribution, support. Most large companies do not even handle their own internal IT for their employee laptops, preferring to outsource the whole mess. So, they don't do anything but sell the product. Customer service becomes a cost of doing business, not as a way to perpetuate sales or even resales.

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix