TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone?

Re: Best Way to Answer a Business Phone?

Mr Joseph Singer (joeofseattle@yahoo.com)
Wed, 13 Sep 2006 08:07:59 -0700 (PDT)

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 23:35:50 -0400 DLR <news23@raleighthings.com> wrote:

> At the major airline call center where my wife works in baggage
> claims, they tend to start with a story and if not cut off can take
> 5 or 10 minutes telling this story which may or may not, usually
> not, be germane to the reason for the call.

This may be fine for an airline call center, but like all nasty habits
it's spread to *everything* without need and no real reason to do it
other than they think "commercializing" answering calls makes them
more "professional."

This is about just as desirable as those stupid popups you now see on
TV programs telling us what's going to be on in the next hour, the
next week or the next year. Infiinitely annoying and hardly helpful
at all.

> And as much as everyone hates auto-attendant systems, including us,
> costs would go through the roof if they staffed for full service
> answering all the time. Calls come in waves. Somewhat predicable but
> with lots of day to day variation.

It's funny that people got along just fine for *years* without auto
attendants and being handled by a real person. Auto attendants and
IVRs especially when planned badly as some are that force you to go
through countless obstacles when you really need to speak to a real
person are crazy. The people who design these auto attendants and
IVRs should use some common sense. It shouldn't be not obvious that
if you want to speak to a real person you should be able to press 0 or
just not say anything and time out to a real person. Countless times
I've tried to let it time out and instead of being transferred to
someone who can help me the designers of the system think it's better
to just drop the call. TS for you! If I'm on an IVR and the IVR
cannot understand "operator" there's something really wrong in the
design of a system.

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