TuVox Speech Central

TMC publisher Nadji Tehrani writes in Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine, “In a recessionary economy, experience teaches us that a company can lose as much as 50–60% of its customers.”

Wow.

While the thrust of Tehrani’s piece is on the value of outbound call center activity for lead generation purposes, it makes one reflect on the value of not annoying your customer for business retention purposes. Every unanswered call, every touch-tone tree from Dante’s 9th Circle of Customer Service Hades, every missed opportunity to use an inbound call to not only retain, but upsell, is a tragedy in any economy, much less during a recession.

All the more reason to take a look at one of our On-Demand speech applications.

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.

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