When IVRs respond to background noise

A user wrote me with this story:

"I called [Bank of America's] toll free number for information about one of my accounts and was doing fine with the voice responses. I have two Siberian Huskies and one of them howled at just the wrong (right) time. The voice response came back and said 'Did you say loan?'"

This story cracked me up and really hit home. I've got a pretty active household... small children and a yellow lab who thinks he's running for watchdog of the year. Do these companies actually expect that when we make a phone call, we'll be perfectly quiet and call from a silent location? It drives me crazy that their voice response systems "recognize" background noise. At least give me the option to key in information. They aren't doing me any favors in "hearing" me if they can never understand me.

I also live in a very small town that apparently doesn't make the radar of most large companies. When they ask me for my address/city and I tell them, the system says "Did you say XYZ?" And I have to say "NO" and repeat the process over and over. Since they generally ask for a zip code, why do I have to speak my city anyway?

Now, I have enough trouble with these systems, but imagine for a moment being a person with an accent, or someone who stutters, or someone with a different speech impediment. I hope that these companies begin to recognize that they are alienating large groups by assuming that their technogy adds value, when in fact, as compared to ten years ago, it detracts value.

If they alienate those with accents, stutterers, those with speech impediments, mothers of small children, owners of siberian huskies and other animals that make noise, and anyone else who doesn't call from the "Cone of Silence," who will their customer base be?

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Posted by GetHuman on Mon, 19 Jun 2006 3:41pm