You may have seen the recent editorial in SpeechTech magazine by Info Today’s David Myron entitled “Your Call Automation Sucks”. In it, Mr. Myron describes his wake-up call, or in this case, wake-up email of the same title, that led him to issue an open call for VUI help. Unconventional yes, but I think this is a bold move and more companies should follow his lead. Some out of the box thinking is exactly what we need in this industry to affect real change, as I’ve said before. Management of every company should call their self-service numbers and do some soul searching. In his case, Myron’s editorials are always as slick as Info Today’s website, but he had forgotten about his other public media channel – the IVR. This is a common problem by vendors who often think that just picking some internal IT guy to record a few prompts (that he probably wrote himself over the mic on his computer) is sufficient for customer self-service. Vendors ask for loyalty from their customers, but then treat them with such disregard in this respect. It took very little time or effort and no money for InfoToday to elicit a lot of free help. You get what you give – IVR karma.
–Simonie
