TuVox Speech Central

The recent issue of Business Week (3/3/2008) has an update on the “Get Human” initiative started by Paul English in 2005.

For anyone living under a rock during 2005-2006 when Paul was making the rounds of NPR and MSNBC, here’s what GetHuman is — you go to his website (www.GetHuman.com) and it lists a few hundred companies’ customer service numbers and tells you what to press or say to speak to a living, breathing person on the other end of the phone. Eureka!

After the initial novelty wore off, Get Human morphed into a proposed “standard”, with the half-hearted and opportunistic support of Nuance and Microsoft.

So here’s my take on this thing. When I read the Business Week article, I got the sense that the author (Jena McGregor) started out with a premise — Get Human is dead! – and pretty much wrote a page to support that preconceived notion.

If you actually go to GetHuman.com, you’ll see that a transformation has taken place since 2006.

Although the idea of a standard never took hold, the site now has a new focus. In addition to the IVR cheat sheet, there is a new “Consumer Rating” column, kind of like a Web 2.0 vigilante version of the Better Business Bureau.

And (hilariously), there is a column of affiliate web ads on the far right, implying that Get Human is paying its web hosting bills by driving traffic to the very companies they are exposing. Genius!

Angel.com’s Blog has an interesting take on the momentum loss of the Get Human movement. Ahmed Bouzid makes some very valid points about how the IVR/ACD vendors need to carry the flag to re-energize the campaign.

While that’s probably a sound approach, I prefer a market-driven strategy. In certain situations, people will always want to talk to a real person. Companies understand that. In other cases, the IVR is so unbelievably bad, people bail out because of sheer frustration.

Eventually, killer automation apps like the American Airlines IVR will prevail, and the lumbering old touch-tone dinosaurs will eventually die out.

And on that day, we might not need to “get human” any more.

TuVox Podcast:

Since last summer when we launched TuVox Speech Central, people have been sending me stories about really bad IVR and ACD systems that they call into.

I’ve been keeping a running list of some of the most offensive (and untrue) statements ever uttered by these abominations of automation. Here are a few worth noting:

1. Your call is important to us. Really? If it was truly important to you, I think you’d staff adequately, or at least give me an automated system to use.
2. For quality purposes, your call may be monitored or recorded. I’ve been hearing this little gem for years, and I’m still waiting for the quality to show up. A better way to word this might be “We record. Don’t sue us.”
3. Please listen closely, as your options have changed. No, they haven’t, and please take this annoying little message off its permanent place at the front of your menu. It’s delaying me from actually listening closely to the options, which I repeat, are exactly the same as they were the last time I called.
4. Did you know we have a website? No kidding. Welcome to 1995. Let me guess: its www, then your company name, then dot-com. Note to ACD administrator: please delete this non-informative announcement as soon as you read this.
5. Your call will be handled by the next available representative.Absolutely not true. The next available representative will handle the guy that has been waiting longest. Think about it.
6. Due to unexpected call volume… You can use this excuse probably once a year. Why, then, do I hear this message every time I call your call center?

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. Please let me know if I forgot any. And if you are responsible for an ACD or IVR, I would suggest killing some or all of these useless clichés of modern life.

I will pay you cash money.

TuVox Podcast: