Two, actually. Voicemail systems for credit cards that insist you use voice, and don't offer a keypad option.

But this one also bugged me. After giving me the confirmation number, it asks "Can I repeat that for you?"

The answer is obviously "yes," and never going to be "no," but that obvious grammatical logic would put me in an infinite loop. It irks me as a pedant. I wish it would ask instead "should I repeat that for you?" If it were a human, I would joke with it, saying, of course you can, but you don't need to. But with a machine, it's simply irritating.

Often one finds that hitting the keys anyway will yield the desired result, even if the voice-recognition software is presented as the sole option. I deal with United Airlines from time to time, and their deal is much as you described. But if you hit the keys anyway it'll usually work. Or just frantically hit "0" a bunch of times, and eventually a human will intervene.

I'm doing the VRU Hell, phone-calling thing today myself. Problems with health insurance providers, doctor’s offices and their associated billing services.

I hate the VRU machines, the only thing apparently dumber than the VRU, is the live humans that work behind them.

How about voice mail systems that take your account and SSN and then don't pass them on the CSR when you finally get connected to a human?

I'm with Eric, because that is frustrating. After playing the game, feeding the number to the voice system, and sorting through the maze of what my issue is... the first thing I get from the voice operator: What's your account number and pin? Damn, I entered that twice, an initial then verification, for both, and it was for... NOTHING?

Sadly, I'm sure these VRU programmers are paid far more than they are worth.

> How about voice mail systems that take your
> account and SSN and then don't pass them on the
> CSR when you finally get connected to a human?

You can say that again!

/sarcasm

When you jump through all those hoops you are helping the call center understand the predominance of problems through reporting. Also, call centers usually have a huge electronic bill board that tell the analysts on the floor how many calls of certain types of issues are on hold. Generally the analysts are broken up into teams of specialist fields that can focus more specifically on the support tools needed to solve your problem. Everyone on a helpdesk is expected to field all issues received by that department but in that group are subject matter experts more intimate with specific issues. So, if you go through the whole rigamaroll at the beginning chances are you may reach someone actually able to quickly solve your problem then someone who will put you on hold every 5 seconds so they can ask someone what to do.

If the automated teller at the beginning of the call asks for specific peices of data that information is usually feed into a ticketing system that automatically pops up on the analysts screen when they answer your call. In that ticket will be your personal profile information and a list of previous tickets created under your name from prior calls. That way they can more quickly bypass the greeting and information gathering portions of the call and move into the problem discovery and issue resolution. It also makes the case for possibly escalating your issue with a 2nd or 3rd tier support team if your issue is a ongoing problem. A good analyst will get all the information needed to pull up your call history regardless. However, if the information gathering takes to long then things like call history can be overlooked and because the clock is ticking on each call the analyst will start to get rushed.

If the automated teller at the beginning of the call asks for specific peices of data that information is usually feed into a ticketing system that automatically pops up on the analysts screen when they answer your call.

In Heaven after you die, Josh - maybe. Not on any non-astral plane I've ever been on though. I have never in my entire life been finally greeted by a human operator who eschewed asking me for all the numeric ID's already painfully poked in by hand up front.

Other major megative hygiene factors in phone robot conversation:

1) The seeming assumption that every phone instrument in the known universe is either an ancient Bell TouchTone desk model that lets you keep the handset to your ear while you winkle in the keystrokes, or a cellular handset with either a wired or Bluetooth headset to allow the same. Generating immediate synthesized voice feedback when virtually all modern phones are one-piece handsets that - as actually used - have to be pulled away from the ear the use the keypad is mind-blowingly dimwitted. It guarantees that anyone not wearing a phone-linked earpiece is guaranteed to miss the first two or three words of the response. Most of us, I think, would just as soon not be forced to go around looking like Junior G-Men just to humor all the moron call director programmers out there.

2) The above problem makes using the pestilential first- or last-name directories that seem to be a universal feature of robot receptionists these days even more annoying than otherwise. Especially gnashed-teeth-inducing are the ones that take variable-length name inputs and begin talking back whenever "enough" of the name is in hand. Then there are the significant fraction of directory systems that operate in infinite-loop fashion once entered, requiring a hang-up and re-dial to actually make use of any information gleaned from them.

May the fleas of 1,000 camels, etc...

I have never in my entire life been finally greeted by a human operator who eschewed asking me for all the numeric ID's already painfully poked in by hand up front.

Never? I find this to be the case at least have the time, and on rare occasions the operator had ALL information I entered into keypad, and asked none of it.

On the other hand... just yesterday I called a certain office and got the following message (either just before or just after entering my SSN): "Be aware that the operator may not have access to the number you entered." And sure enough, she was not.

At least they were being honest... :)

Meant "half the time," of course.

Just last night I had to play that game with Brighthouse, who gave me a new twist.

After saying my phone number twice (which required a decibel level that brought my wife from another room to see what was wrong), learning the url of the website that might contain the solution I needed (I was calling because I couldn't get a connection to the Internet), hearing the status of my billing account and declining to make a payment over the phone, I finally had an opportunity to select Technical Support when the operatorbot offered to "Return to the main menu" (the new twist, since this was the first time the main menu was available.)

Once I had a tech on the line, he fixed the problem in half the time it took to reach him, after asking for my phone number of course.

There is an insurance company I used to call fairly often; I do not deal with them any more, so I do not remember the name. I discovered that I got human help much faster if, when asked for my account (phone, SSN -- don't remember exactly either) number, I typed in random gibberish instead.

Quote from Dick: "I have never in my entire life been finally greeted by a human operator who eschewed asking me for all the numeric ID's already painfully poked in by hand up front."

Yea there was one tech I used to work with that insisted he make the customer repeat everything. I always gave him a hard time about. I usually require the customer to repeat some peices of information for verification purposes. These are added layers of security required for certain types of requests.