[Mb-civic] Virtually annoying - Robert Kuttner - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Virtually annoying

By Robert Kuttner  |  October 15, 2005

ARE YOU ONE of those people who loves voice-recognition software -- a 
machine posing as a virtual person -- when you are trying to change a 
flight, straighten out a bill, or get your phone line fixed? American 
business is training consumers to follow this routine -- and like it.

If anybody should know how to get the technology and the customer 
psychology right, it's the phone company. ''Voice recognition does 
work," says Jim Smith, of Verizon's media-relations office.

Smith cites Verizon's customer focus groups. These show that consumers 
are initially skeptical, he says, ''because they're afraid they're going 
to screw it up." But once they get used to it, Smith explains, people 
like it because voice software is faster and more efficient than waiting 
for an operator. Since 1999, Verizon has gradually expanded voice 
recognition from directory assistance to billing inquiries to repair.

Well, not this consumer.

The first difficulty is that if your problem is the least bit complex -- 
let's say the repair office messed up your order -- Ms. 
Voice-Recognition can't solve your problem. And if you have a 
directory-assistance request for a name either too common or too 
unusual, let alone a business with multiple locations, she often gets it 
wrong.

Ms. Voice Recognition is also disingenuous. She'll pretend she just 
noticed something, even though the whole spiel is pre-recorded. ''Oh, 
just so you know," she coos, as if suddenly remembering an important 
detail, ''We're currently experiencing heavy call volume."

I don't know about you, but if I have to deal with a machine, I'd prefer 
that it didn't impersonate a human.

The most irritating thing is her slightly hurt tone of disapproval if 
you insist on a talking to a person. Ms. Voice is disappointed in you 
for not working with her. ''Please hold and I'll transfer you to a 
repair representative," she says petulantly, after you've jilted her and 
jabbed the O key for the fourth time.

Verizon is a little disingenuous, too. Their options-tree doesn't let on 
about punching O -- you have to figure out when in the tree you get to 
do that. Why don't they just tell you? ''That would defeat the purpose," 
says Smith. ''The customer would get no benefit of saving time, and we'd 
get no benefit of saving costs."

Saving Verizon costs is of course the whole idea. But saving consumers' 
time?

Many people get so annoyed that they deliberately sabotage the system. 
''I just say gibberish," confides a friend. ''Just a moment," replies 
the directory assistance droid, plainly miffed. ''I'll get an operator 
to assist you."

In case you wondered, the Verizon voice you hear is not 
computer-generated. It's the voice of a real person, a ''voice-model" 
named Eryca Dawson, who regularly fine-tunes her recorded persona and 
script, in response to Verizon's market research.

Someone at Verizon apparently decided to give Eryca's voice-recognition 
character a distinct personality -- perky, but no-nonsense, distinctly 
Northeast-corridor with a touch of attitude, and inclined to toss her 
curls when she doesn't get her way. I feel like I went to high school 
with her.

Yes, I know -- I should be doing all this through the Internet, without 
benefit of humans, real or imitation. And the Web is great for booking 
flights, buying stuff, paying bills, and of course for looking up phone 
numbers. But when it comes to something off-script, you still need a 
real person.

According to Economics 101, if an industry has a lot of competition for 
customers, you can expect the vendor to be very customer-friendly. For 
instance, when you call to book a hotel room or to a mutual fund company 
or to the sales office of an auto dealer, you can get a human being, 
pronto. But when you call a monopoly, you are likely to get the machine 
or to die on hold.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/15/virtually_annoying/
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