gethuman

Finding 800 Numbers Can Be Tough

2007-07-21T21:40:00.000-04:00

So here's another resource to look them up.

http://inter800.com/

Sprint to Cancel Complainers' Service

2007-07-11T20:13:00.000-04:00

Sprint's recent decision to cancel customers who call for service too often, creates an opportunity for their competitors to highlight better customer service policies and gain current and future customers.

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/183432.html

"CEOs Think Customer Service Is Great"

2007-05-23T22:11:00.000-04:00

Red Tape Chronicles is MSNBC.com's effort to unmask government bureaucracy, corporate sneakiness and outright scam artists. Check out their article on the corporate take on customer service:

"CEOs Think Customer Service is Great"

Verizon's Easy 0 Service

2007-05-14T10:35:00.000-04:00

In a recent press release, Verizon announced the expansion of its "Easy 0" service.

Easy 0 is now available to Verizon customers in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

I think it would be helpful and easy for all companies to publish their phone menus. It wouldn't eliminate the issues, but would certainly help.

Llance Kezner has done a superb job of mapping the...

2007-04-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

Llance Kezner has done a superb job of mapping the agent-guided IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology to the gethuman core principles. Agent-guided technology is where the caller interacts with self-service in a conventional fashion and the progress is monitored and guided by a human agent.

Check it out: http://www.changingcallcenters.com/2007/04/meeting-gethumans-core-principals-with.html

Goog411

2007-04-13T22:48:00.000-04:00

REPLY: A live person at a fair price would be great, IF it existed. However, given that it doesn't exist, GOOG411 is a reasonable alternative, hitting on three items that are huge for most consumers: It's cheap, convenient and safe. It quickly finds the phone number that you're looking for and connects you at no additional charge. No irritating ads and no need to take your eyes off the road while you write done the phone number. I tested this product several times and had the same easy experience each time.

COMMENT: Have you tried goog411? I have and wasn't impressed. Besides, isn't goog411 sortof the antithesis of what this site is all about? Wouldn't you rather talk to a live person at a fair price (assuming that service were available)?

ORIGINAL POST: I've gotten some feedback on this post Goog 411 is a free, automated voice service to lookup phone numbers. (Damn the phone companies for charging us $1.50 for each 411 call.) Did I mention that Goog 411 was free?

ATA Self-regulation attempting to pre-empt regulation

2007-04-02T10:19:00.000-04:00

The American Teleservices Association (ATA) is holding a conference in Washington DC on legislation that would impact the teleservices industry. They plan to introduce a set of self-regulatory standards at the conference. The ATA has identified five (5) pending bills seeking to impose regulations for inbound call centers. Each of these bills is addressing the need for consumers to be able to reach a human promptly when they need one. The bills are:
Oklahoma H.B. 2783. Customer Service by an Actual Human Being Act. At any point during an inbound call the consumer has the right to “press zero” and get connected to a live operator.
New York A.B. 10446. Establishes the department of insurance shall require every health insurer group health plan, health maintenance organization, or other entity offering medical benefits, whether by insurance or otherwise, to provide residents of this state with a way to bypass the automated telephone answering service of such health insurer, group health plan, health maintenance organization, or other entity offering medical benefits.
Rhode Island H.B. 7660. First, RI HB 7660 requires all cell phone companies to provide their customers with direct toll-free numbers to corporate contacts “other than automated answering system” in order to resolve inquiries relating to cell phone service. Second, it requires cell phone companies to document all customer inquires and record the time, in minutes, spent resolving the issues raised by the customer. Third, “upon resolution of any inquiry or dispute related to billing or service which is resolved in the customers favor, said customer shall be credited on their account one dollar for every minute spent resolving the issue or dispute.”
New Jersey A.B. 2089. Provides that "if a telecommunications company utilizes an automated answering system or response system during normal business hours, the company shall have trained company representatives available to respond to customer telephone inquiries and shall inform customers that they may have access to a company representative in lieu of the automated system.”
New Jersey A.B. 2712. Same as A.B. 2089, but targets cable televisions companies.

How to complain well, MSNBC

2007-03-26T14:56:00.000-04:00

MSNBC recently did a piece about how to get better customer service once you get to a human.

Rotten Phish

2007-03-21T13:39:00.000-04:00

RottenPhish is a database of email contacts for where you can report "phishing" attacks. The term "phishing" is used to describe an email which "appears" to come from some legitimate company asking you to update your account information, but then when you click on the link in their email, instead of being brought to the real site for that company, you are brought to a cleverly disguised URL and website which mimics the real one. (This would be like putting your ATM card and code into a fake ATM machine.)

Here's a new blog that you might want to check out...

2007-03-17T16:21:00.000-04:00

Here's a new blog that you might want to check out. It provides information about customer service and gives tips on how to improve it.

www.serviceuntitled.com

When caller ID doesn't help

2007-03-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

When the phone is ringing and caller ID says "Name Unavailable," this site helps you figure out who's calling and what they want: http://whocalled.us/.

Amazon's Call Back Feature

2007-03-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

I just tried out Amazon.com's "Call me" feature from their website, which allows consumers to request, via the Internet, a call back from a customer service rep. The site claims the following:

- No waiting They'll connect you directly with a Customer Service Associate,
- No delays as long as you're logged into Amazon when you "Click to Call us", They'll know who you are; you won't have to answer a lengthy series of questions to verify your identity, you can get right down to business, and
- They're ready to answer your questions the Customer Service Associate who speaks to you will be immediately ready to focus on your questions.

My experience was: I didn't have to wait. My phone rang immediately and I was connected within a minute to a human. Since I was logged in, I didn't have to provide a lot of information; they knew who I was and quickly pulled up the information about my order. And the representative was ready to focus on my question.

I called several times to test this and got a representative with an accent several times. Their recorded message (before the human came on) was a bit verbose, but not too bad. Also, a few of the times that I called they were making upgrades to their system and couldn't help me at all. Hopefully that was just a bad day for them in that regard.

Overall, that's pretty good, when compared to our standards. I can really only knock them on two items: difficulty understanding the reps and verbosity. But I do commend their innovative use of technology. Of course it assumes that you're willing to log on via the Internet, but if you're willing to make that effort, seems like they are willing to respond.

Verizon Lies To Customer To Get Him Off The Phone, Charges ETF

2007-02-21T10:03:00.001-05:00

These CSR don't care about the customer and Verizon doesn't really care how the CSR treats the customer.

read more | digg story

Comcast Fined $12,281.84 for not answering the phone fast enough

2007-02-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

Comcast was slapped yesterday with a $12,281.84 fine for not answering the phone fast enough.

That feels good. :)

Recorded experience w/ Dell

2007-01-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocal Laboratories, passed this link on to me. I think this recording is a great example of what often happens when consumers reach out for help and are greeted by an automated system.

I don't agree with Peter's initial statement that "Most people have fairly decent experiences with customer service..." Unfortunately, I think more often than not, consumers have this experience. Check it out:

http://www.vocalabs.com/resources/blog/C1493281986/E20070122170402/

Reply to comments

2007-01-22T13:19:00.000-05:00

It was Chase and I don't have this issue with the other cards I have either. Haven't figured out why. Yes, I plan to cancel my account, when I get all my credit bills and decide where to transfer the balance. I think, now that I'm not so frustrated, I'll also try to find out why that happened and discuss my experience with them.

Update: since my initial post, I also activated my husband's Chase card (independent of mine) and didn't have this experience at all. Wonder what it was about my card that triggered this process.

Comments on Every opportunity to sell you something

2007-01-22T12:52:00.000-05:00

Monday, January 22, 2007 - Who was the credit card company that did this? I've renewed my credit cards many times in the past and never had an experience such as this. It has invariably been a quick-&-easy experience. We should really let these folks know that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated. Did you cancel the card? I certainly would have.

Every opportunity to sell you something

2007-01-20T11:07:00.000-05:00

I recently received new credit cards from a major credit card company to replace those that were nearly expired. Of course they had the stickers on them instructing me to call an 800 number from my home phone to verify receipt.

FIRST FRUSTRATION: When I called the number, they asked me to enter the last four digits of my account number for "security purposes." Then they said, "Sorry, we'll need your entire 16 digit account number." ... waist of my time. And of course, they had me repeat it again when I got to a person. If I'm going to have to state my account number to the agent, which I understand, why do I have to enter it into the telephone?

SECOND FRUSTRATION: When I finally reached a representative, she began rattling off promotions under that pretense that she was making good use of my time... educating me while my cards were activated. Since I was held captive (couldn't hang up until she said my cards were active), I dutifully listened to a few promotions, politely saying "no thank you" after each.

Finally, after 2 or 3, I said, "I do not want to purchase or hear about any promotions. Please do not say anything else to me except, 'your cards are active.'" How rude of me. I truly felt for the representative, since she was simply reading a script and doing her job.

Once again, and twice in one phone call I might add, this company wasted my time and frustrated me to the point where I was rude to their employee... not something I like to do.

Now, they have risked losing my business and for what? ... to try to get me to pay $12.95 per month to have access to my credit report. So, instead of paying them my monthly interest, which is significantly higher than $12.95, I'll be transferring my balances to another credit card and paying them my monthly interest. Had they not wasted my time, or at least asked me if I'd like to hear about their promotions, I could have said "no" and got off the phone. It would have freed my time to allow for more shopping, spending money and accruing interest, which makes them money. Very short-sighted on their part, I'd say.

An Analysis of the Gethuman Scores

2007-01-08T15:30:00.000-05:00

The gethuman movement has scored the enterprises that are in the gethuman 500 database against the gethuman standard, which specifies how customer service phone systems should work. Each of the 10 standards was worth 10 points and a school scoring scheme was used (A = 90+, B = 80 to 90, C =70 to 80, D = 60 to 70, and F = below 60). A summary of the test results for the 500 enterprises is:

Grade - % of total
A - 1.80%
B - 4.01%
C - 3.81%
D - 6.01%
F - 84.37%

Less than 2% received an A score and a whopping 84.4% received an F. If any doubt existed re: how poorly telephone self-service is implemented, these scores put it to rest. A further analysis reveals that it is actually worse than it looks. The A and B scores are dominated by call centers that are direct to an agent and that do not deploy self-service. Catalog companies and hotels were strongly represented. The call centers here handle mostly sales transactions. They have adequate agents available at all times since they recognze that their revenue will decline if they do not. When you add an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR), the scores deteriorate, simply because they are implemented so badly. Callers often have to repeat things when they talk to a human. For most of the self-service, the prompts are verbose and waste the caller’s time. Wait times are usually not provided to the caller. Callback is very rarely offered as an option to the callers in order that they don’t have to waste their time waiting in a queue. Incredibly, a number of these enterprises shut down after business hours and don’t even bother to get the caller’s phone number or let them leave a voice mail. Message is: “if you really want to do business with us badly enough, then you need to call us back when it is convenient for us.” Incredible arrogance! This situation seems like an incredible opportunity. These companies are antagonizing their customers. They aren’t even aware of it and sure do not want to do this. We know what needs to be done to fix this. The solution seems pretty straightforward:
1) you educate the enterprises about how much they are irritating their callers;
2) you tell them what they are doing wrong; and
3) you propose a solution that fixes it

Check out this neat article in the Washington Post: Get a Human, Get an A. Get a Machine, Get an F.

Seattle Times Article

2006-12-12T21:58:00.000-05:00

Seattle Times recently published an article ("Talk to a human? Most firms flunk test") about the gethuman grading. They also included some interesting comments from companies on the list. We thought you might want to check it out.

See the latest gethuman 500 to see how each company was graded based on the gethuman standard. You can also provide your assessment of how companies do against the standard on our discussion board.

gethuman and the IVR industry

2006-12-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

"Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things -- to help, or at least to do no harm".

-Hippocrates

SpeechTek 2006

Much of the tone of SpeechTek 2006 (the biggest speech industry conference of the year) was set by its opening keynote address. In the presentation, Paul English, founder of gethuman.com, outlined some of the desirable characteristics of a "gethuman standard" for self-service systems. Some of the proposed features closely reflect already acknowledged, if not always adhered to, industry best practices. Many suggested standards would be easy and inexpensive to implement. Still other standards will require changes in call center infrastructure and, for that matter, the way some corporations perceive their fundamental customer service obligations.

Mixed Reactions

From my own informal sampling of attendees, reaction to the presentation took two basic forms. One was basically an affirmative (if tentatively supportive) reaction. The other was defensive and dismissively critical.

The affirmative reaction could be described as supportive of the overall goals but cautious about the final details of the standard. There was also a sense of hesitance on the part of representatives of this group to say anything that would appear negative about the standard and the overall consumer movement that gethuman represents.

The defensive reaction was less cautionary. Those in this group openly criticized the standard, scoffed at the movement and aggressively defended the status quo.

Reaction to Reactions

I completely understand the affirmative reaction. After all, many VUI (Voice User Interface) designers will (in private, at least) admit that user needs often play a secondary role in the design and deployment of call center IVRs (Interactive Voice Response). Corporate goals and IT (Information Technology) realities usually carry more weight when it comes to making IVR design decisions. I can also appreciate any hesitance to criticize the movement. Who, after all, would like to run the risk of being publicly perceived as anti-user or anti-consumer?

I cannot understand the defensive reaction at all. Furthermore, I think that those reacting in this way are profoundly out of touch with the realities of the situation. Some fail to realize that the gethuman movement is not just about self-service, speech systems or IVR. The movement is primarily a consumer revolt against the terrible state of customer service in the US today. Consumers have had it with the indignities of interminable hold times, incompetent or rude customer service representatives (CSRs), and CSRs who are not capable of clearly communicating in English. Poorly designed, confusing and annoying self-service systems are only one part of the overall problem and speech industry people are wrong to assume that their technologies and practices are the primary target of the movement.

Yet the gethuman movement does have much to say about what is wrong with today's IVRs. Ironically, we in the speech industry have already heard most of what it is being said. For example, most in the industry would never deny callers the ability to reach a human nor would they disconnect users when users make "too many" mistakes. In fact, some of the specific suggestions described by English during the keynote have been recognized best practices for many, many years.

Why the gethuman standard matters

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, too many of our industry's best practices as well as some of our more benign IVR design conventions are still unacceptably evident out in the field. Far too many companies are still more interested in the cost savings afforded by an IVR than in how easy an IVR is to use or even how well the IVR meets the needs of its users. It is time for such owners of IVRs to rethink their priorities.

Paul English's work and the gethuman movement actually represent a tremendous opportunity for the speech industry. It is an unprecedented opportunity to listen to consumers, address their concerns and get VUIs right. I encourage all in the industry to rise to the occasion and find a way to help. If they choose not to help, they are likely to cause more harm.

Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. --Walter Rolandi, Ph.D.

gethuman final exams

2006-11-20T21:52:00.000-05:00

Today the gethuman team releases our first report card on the gethuman 500, rating each of the most commonly called 500 organizations on customer service telephone systems.

The gethuman standard specifies how customer service phone systems should work. This standard was developed over the past few months, with input from thousands of consumers.

Sadly, only a handful of organizations have achieved an "A" grade as of today. :( There is much work to be done...

Consumers, if customer service is important to you, please be sure to reward companies with a good grade, and to let poor performing companies know that you will discontinue their service if they do not improve.

Questions about the new grading system? Contact us.

Avoiding draconian inbound regulation:

2006-11-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

During the last 20 year,the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has implemented a number of rules that regulate the outbound calling area. These regulations were strongly opposed by the folks that were doing the outbound calling. They whined like stuck pigs, claiming that these regulations would destroy the industry and cause millions of jobs to be lost. All of this effort was a huge waste of time. The FTC listened to the complaints of the consumers, the proposed regulations prevailed and life went on.

We now are witnessing the first legislation that is addressing the consumer complaints that have been building against inbound calling. It is just a matter of time before we see Federal rule-making by the FTC that supports inbound calling laws.

If legislation is inevitable, would it not make sense to attempt to achieve laws that are reasonable to implement and yet address the complaints of the callers/consumers? This would seem to be a much more appropriate approach than to simply fight the regulations (and end up losing anyway).

The only way to avoid onerous and draconian inbound regulation is to put together regulations/standards that eliminate the irritation that callers are experiencing on inbound calls. Just what are the things that irritate callers the most. Most of the really serious caller irritants have to do with the IVR system.

Following are the ten items that consumers want the most and not providing them is a major irritant:
1. Don't make it difficult to connect to a human.
2. Don't disconnect on errors-- connect to a human.
3. Provide humans that I can understand and that don't have heavy accents.
4. Don't waste my time and confuse me with verbose prompts.
5. Do not advertise to me.
6. If I have to wait in a queue for a human, tell me what the wait time will be.
7. If I provide information to the IVR, don't ask me to repeat it to the human.
8. Don't attempt to entertain me with a persona.
9. Ask me occasionally what I think of your service.
10. Provide the option to call me back.

The graph shown above summarizes the results of a survey that gethuman did in September, 2006 of approximately 4,500 consumers. Some of the items are more in demand than others. It needs to be recognized, though, that even the least in demand item had over 90% of the consumers wanting it. None of these are unreasonable demands. Many of them are trivial to implement. Providing them will lead to consumers that find self-service easy to use and providing a quick-and-easy experience. If the FTC is guided by feedback from consumers, then it should be apparent what the inbound regulations will look like.

I Can't Understand You

2006-10-31T14:48:00.000-05:00

So often we receive emails about companies outsourcing their customer service to foreign countries, like India. Our users are completely frustrated by the impossibility of understanding some of these accents and are desperately seeking ways to avoid them.

Well, I had to laugh (or I might have cried) when I recently called a company that's located in the southern part of the US and I could not, and I mean could not, understand the customer service rep. I had to ask her to repeat each question or statement at least 2 or 3 times; "I'm sorry, but I can't understand you. Could you please say that again?"

Please understand that I'm not picking on southerners, by any stretch. I'm from the northeast, Boston area to be more specific, and I know that people often have a hard time understanding where I "pahhhk my cahh" (translation: park my car). I really have to correct my speech to include my "R's" when I'm making business calls or just want to be understood on the first try.

So, if I can correct my accent so that others can understand me, and I don't answer phones for a living, why can't customer service reps "correct" or neutralize their accents (be it from India, the northeast, the south or wherever), much like news anchors neutralize theirs? And why don't companies provide -- no, require speech and diction classes to help them do so?

It seems like a simple mathematical equation to me: Companies save money (or at least that's the goal) by outsourcing; and if they don't have understandable reps, they lose money by frustrating customers. If they outsourced, but required "re-training" for accents, they would save money, at the low cost of re-training rather than frustrating consumers beyond belief.

And, incidentally, I feel that every company should consider this issue for all employees who have the responsibility of speaking with customers...regardless of their location. For example, I called another company and got a representative located in India. He had a very slight accent that didn't interfere with our communication at all.

The issue isn't the location, or even outsourcing (at least from a communication perspective), but rather proper oversight and training; putting consumers' needs, in this case the need to understand the representative, over the company's bottom line.

introducing the gethuman standard

2006-10-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

Today the gethuman team has published the v1.0 version of the gethuman standard.

This new standard was developed based on thousands of email exchanges and hundreds of phone calls with many of the millions of consumers who have visited the gethuman website.

The purpose of the gethuman standard is to put a stake in the ground for how large companies should design their customer service phone systems to support the needs of their customers.

The gethuman team is now embarking on an extensive set of testing for each of the gethuman 500 companies to rank their customer service phone systems based on this initial standard.

Please read more about the gethuman standard. And stay tuned, we have a lot more news coming.