I was just exposed to what I believe to be the stupidest automated voice recognition system (AVRS) that just about any major corporation has ever installed in all of human history. It comes from Aetna Insurance, and it was so absolutely Kafkaesque, I couldn’t let it pass the opportunity for a blog.

Before I walk you through the saga, frame-by-frame, I would comment at the outset that the system is structured to make it virtually impossible to maneuver your way into speaking to a human being regardless of what you are trying to accomplish.  Aetna cannot possibly, for whatever policy reason, want us to talk to anyone who either thinks or collects a paycheck. So, they control the access points to such an extent that the journey to a meaningful exchange of information is engineered with a series of land mines and bluff points.

As a customer, you are left with no option except to try to bludgeon your way through the system or connive the voice mail system into getting you where you need to go.  

I was unsuccessful at both of those options. 

My first encounter resulted from being referred to a very specific telephone number and person’s name after voicing my concerns at the local level.  

This is how it sounded.

FIRST CALL
[Aetna] “Hello, thank you for calling Aetna. Could we have your provider ID#?”

[LJP]   “I am not a provider.”

[Aetna] “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand your provider ID#. Please say or punch in your provider ID#.”

[LJP] “There is no provider ID# because I am not a provider.”

[Aetna] “Sorry, I cannot pull up your file without a provider ID#.”

There were no other prompts that would get me to a live human being so that I could tell them why I was calling because, at least for that particular telephone number, without a provider ID#, I was out of luck.

So, I tried again with a published customer toll free number.  Listen to this one!

SECOND CALL

[Aetna] “Hello, thank you for calling Aetna. Can I have your customer ID#?”

[LJP] “222222”

[Aetna] “Your customer ID# is 222224, is that correct?”

[LJP] “No, that is not correct.”

[Aetna] “Sorry, I did not understand your answer. Please identify your customer ID#.”

By the way, and believe it or not, the Auto Attendant actually had a tone of irritation to her response to me.  I’m serious, and I promise that I wasn’t imagining it. This Auto Attendant recording was actually “miffed.”

[LJP] “222222”

[Aetna] ”Your customer ID# is 222224. Is that correct?”

[LJP] “No, that is not correct.”

[Aetna] “Sorry, I did not understand your answer; what is your name?”

[LJP] “My name is Larry Pino.”

[Aetna] “Your name is Larry Pino. Is that correct?”

[LJP] “Yes, that is correct.”

[Aetna] “I’m sorry, I did not understand your answer. If your name is Larry Pino, say “yes” or touch 1 on the dial pad. Or, if that is not your name, say “no” or dial 2 on the dial pad.”

This time I wasn’t going to even attempt to trust language, so I hit 1 at which point it was followed by:

[Aetna] “Thank you. Your name is Larry Pino. What is your date of birth?”

[LJP] “September 6, 1951.

[Aetna] “I’m sorry, I did not understand your answer.  Please say your date of birth or use the dial pad by pressing the month first with two digits, the day second with two digits, and the year third with two digits.”

Again, I didn’t trust the AVRS, so I simply inputted the date on the dial pad.

[Aetna] “September 6, 1951. Is that correct?”

[LJP]  Somehow, forgetting that the AVRS does not follow its own language commands, I responded:  “Yes.  That is correct.”

[Aetna] “I’m sorry, I did not understand that answer. If yes, say yes or press 1 on the dial pad. If not, say no, or press 2 on the dial pad.”

[LJP] I pressed 1 on the dial pad, about to collapse under the burden of the exercise.

[Aetna]  “Your date of birth is September 6, 1951. Thank you. Just one moment.”

[Aetna] “I’m sorry, that date of birth does not match your customer ID# 222224.”

At that point, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I was going to either throw the phone across the room, jump out of the window, or disconnect the call.

I chose the latter.

There is clearly a value to AVRS programs.  And I have experienced several which are intuitive, soft, customer friendly, efficient in getting you to the right person when you arrive, and so forth.

But, for the life of me, I am mystified by companies which have such little regard for their customers that they think it’s appropriate to architect a series of moats and narrowly constructed entry points to obstruct access into the bowles of the kindgom, when they must recognize first, that the only thing most of us want is an effective resolution of a relatively specific set of problems; and, more importantly, retention of a customer is a whole lot less costly than acquisition of a new one.

I have not tended to hang out in my entrepreneurial writings in the world of customer service, but, based on my internal and external experiences, let me offer some specific suggestions at constructing a customer-centric phone system, regardless of whether it’s an AVRS or dial pad format:

• A pleasant empathetic tone of voice; almost always female;
• Minimize your call feature options as much as possible:  Occam’s razor here;
• Departmentalization based almost 100% on functional distinctions.  Why, for example, would you have a call distinguished on the call feature options, which ends up being routed to the same person or several people in the same department;
• Give your caller a clear option to avoid the selection process and talk to a human being;
• And when a live human being does answer, please…please…please, make sure the human being is conversational and doesn’t sound like an extension of a recording.  Simple elements:  personal name, engaged responsiveness, and solution orientation.

Good heavens, we’ve all experienced what has to be the worst recession of our professional lives.  The easiest lesson in the world to pull out is as basic as they come:  your relationship to your customer is gold–don’t screw it up!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 29th, 2010 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Business Rules, Concepts, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.