Anyone who has suffered the frustration or indeed the loss of valuable life minutes through using a corporate (HMRC / Banks / Mobile / Broadband etc.) call centre auto-attendant, knows how difficult it is to get an answer or worst still get to speak to a real person, will be cheered by what this man has done – see article on link below. He has mapped the auto –attendant options (press 1 for xxx or 2 for yyy etc.) of all the major organisations to help people to get the answer they need, or perhaps more importantly to speak to a real person (ideally UK based) – see website link below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22567656http://www.pleasepress1.com/When reading the BBC article I did laugh at the numpty from the HMRC (the worst organisation in the UK to contact or indeed do anything) who believes that the introduction of new (it’s not!!) speech recognition technology will improve things. S/he has obviously not used this technology themselves; otherwise they would know that it is even more frustrating and takes longer to use than the phone keypad and menu options. How many times have you tried to use the voice driven systems to ‘instruct’ using your voice: only to be told – usually a minute or so later – that they are ’Sorry but we didn’t hear/understand/get that’ only to be taken through the whole original announcement again, only for it to fail to understand you again and again ……. Only to give up!!
