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March 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sitting in support limbo
The latest to land in my in-box from the McKinsey Quarterly team, "Using IT to boost call-center performance" (registration required), suggests new interactive voice response and voice recognition systems can be a boon for call centres.
Let's hope so. IBM was touting voice-in, text-back information services in 1999. They were to revolutionize information available on smaller devices.
Back to the future in 2006: I'm still left shouting to the new AT&T for small inquiries, unable to have my question understood by IVR. "No, I want to see why my DSL line is not working," I've been heard barking by my small kids as they wonder who I am talking to.
With companies such a Citibank advertising being able to talk to a customer service rep by dialing zero, it's obvious the whole IVR thing and phone maze is getting pretty out of hand. And any benefit to business and home suctomers are not any better - wait times don't seem any shorter.
So, I was happy to find a link in the same McKinsey report arguing: "Telecommunications companies won't be able to afford their expensive call centers much longer, given their shrinking margins. Fortunately, they can cut their customer service bills in half by following the lead of airlines and retailers that have successfully moved many of their transactions to the Web."
At this stage, I'll take the Web any day. But some Web sites, for telecom companies at least, leave people in limbo, unable to get it all done with one method. The dreaded phone call always seems to slip in to the mix. So why not just call from the get-go, one wonders.
Is new IVR and speech recognition technology coming to the rescue of customers seeking support, or is it just aimed at lowering costs?
Perhaps such divergent research reports in the same package have something to do with this incomplete deployment?
Let me know your thoughts on this pressing matter.
Posted by Mike Barton on March 17, 2006 05:06 PM
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