OT: Getting Through Phone a Phone Menu

[Pavel314]

I got involved with one of those voice-response phone menues while trying to resolve an unusual problem with a cell phone this weekend. The robot-lady said, "If you want help with a payment, say 'Payment.' For your account balance, say 'Balance.' " Etc.

I went through this a few times but none of the options matched what I wanted. Finally, I got fed up and said, "I want to talk to a real person!"

"Fine," said the robot-lady, "I'll connect you with customer service."

Then a real person came on the line. I'm not sure if all voice menues are programmed to respond to the words "real person" but it's worth a try.

Paul

[notbob]

"representative" or "agent" are pretty common triggers.

nb

[gfretwell]

"operator" usually works too. Another one that is common is hit 0#

[DA]

This was by no means guaranteed, I'd say it was a rather happy coincidence. Your best bet would be to hit a "0" - a very common setting for the human attendant transfer. Some systems require a "#" (pound sign) after the "0". I am always trying to use key presses instead of actually saying my choice because the chances that the system will get it correctly are much higher. Annoyingly, some auto-attendants don't announce that they have both voice and key press options although most would recognize both. You have to count which voice response option was what number in the sequence and hope the first starts with a "1" (which, unfortunately, is not guaranteed either)

Again, not only "all voice menus" are certainly NOT programmed that way but you may have uncovered the only one in the world that is. Was it Virgin Mobile, BTW? I hate their IVR-only menus. Sounds like something Virgin would do ...

------------------------------------- /\_/\ ((@v@)) NIGHT ():::() OWL VV-VV

[Pavel314]

No, AT&T GoPhone.

Paul

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I've used (tried to use) Virgin's customer service. You can get a person, but that's worse than useless. They don't speak English well, ignore 90% of what you say, and know very little about the products / service.

BTW, I had that experience when trying their mobile broadband service and the MiFi device. It was very erratic.

[snip]

[DA]

Ah, well, these guys would most certainly be The cutting edge in voice recognition through the efforts of AT&T Labs, so it makes total sense. Also makes it even harder to come across another one quite so sophisticated.

[using automated attendant:] When in doubt- hit the zero!

------------------------------------- /\_/\ ((@v@)) NIGHT ():::() OWL VV-VV