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Remember the bad old days of customer self-service? Automated systems would present you with five or more different options -- any one of which could lead to five or more other options. With touchtone systems, accidentally pressing the wrong number at a prompt could result in instant death by disconnection. Then came the speech-recognition systems, with their own specific tortures: creepily cheery voices reciting five or more options; systems that went into lockdown if you sneezed into the phone. Let's not even talk about systems that couldn't understand your accent.
Great article, Erika!
It's true that speech rec is slow to improve. But I'm convinced that that's not a flaw in the industry or any reluctance towards innovation; I believe it's because speech rec is dealing with human beings.
Sure, we can and should tweak the systems; IVR improvement should be an ongoing process, not a one-time implementation. The bottom line is, though, that humans will always trip up the system. We will sneeze, yell at our kids, start giving the wrong phone number, and say "um" a lot. (Ever had an "um" trip up a system?)
So what do you think the next step is? Can we ever perfect the system, or can we simply train our users to be more exact on their end? Will we ever hear the end of "I *hate* those automated speech systems! Just give me a human being!"
I wonder if the answer isn't to put a little more human in the system. What do you think?
It's true that speech rec is slow to improve. But I'm convinced that that's not a flaw in the industry or any reluctance towards innovation; I believe it's because speech rec is dealing with human beings.
Sure, we can and should tweak the systems; IVR improvement should be an ongoing process, not a one-time implementation. The bottom line is, though, that humans will always trip up the system. We will sneeze, yell at our kids, start giving the wrong phone number, and say "um" a lot. (Ever had an "um" trip up a system?)
So what do you think the next step is? Can we ever perfect the system, or can we simply train our users to be more exact on their end? Will we ever hear the end of "I *hate* those automated speech systems! Just give me a human being!"
I wonder if the answer isn't to put a little more human in the system. What do you think?
