Please Continue to Hold… and Hold… or Text, Facebook Us
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It’s one thing as a consumer to go through the frustrating experience of calling for customer service and getting lost in a maze of “Press one for…” and “press two for…” and inevitably being sent to the wrong extension, misunderstood by a bot, or simply cut off and forced to repeat the process. But it’s another to encounter it as a reporter trying to get in touch with companies that make these so-called interactive voice-response systems. Each request made to speak with a living, breathing human for this story was met with a recorded instruction to leave a voicemail.
In short, IVRs systems practice what they preach. “We purposely designed it to have bad customer service,” said Joe Gagnon, chief strategist of Aspect, a Phoenix-based company which markets customer-service solutions such as IVRs. “We made it bad on purpose.”
It’s a strange statement considering that, according to Frost and Sullivan, IVR systems globally will sell $2.6 billion worth of product by 2018 and that an Oracle study reports 67% of consumers will stop doing business with a company following a poor customer service experience. Another 86% said they would be willing to pay more money for a better-quality service.
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