Pull My Hair Out

Sometimes I wonder if companies actually use and test the technology they deploy before they deploy it. I called a major airline today to book a flight. I called instead of booking online because it was a multi segment flight and it was just not something I could do online.

So I call in and I get an IVR. It asks me a few annoying questions and then instead of transferring me to an agent to help me and get things taken care of quickly, it promptly dumps me into an IVR flow to try to walk me through the booking.

What a nightmare experience. I promptly hit zero a few times and got to an agent.

How in the world can any sane person believe that an IVR is the right interface to help someone book a ticket. Although it is a linear process that seems logical for a linear tool like an IVR, there is so much variability within each step that it becomes messy quickly. Then layer on top of that the truly inadequate nature of Voice Recognition and it is a disaster.

It is as if someone in the customer service group made a blind decision to help save money without ever trying the experience for themselves. Because I am certain that if they would have, they would have come to the same conclusion that I did.

It is simple, try it yourself first and see if you would use. That should be your litmus test. Not how much money you are going to save.