Out of date tbh - It's never a labyrinthine phone tree anymore, it's a "natural speech" based menu that can never help with more than the most basic inquiries like "how much is my bill?" and still stubbornly refuses to put you in the queue for a real person.
It doesn't even take swearing for some of them - I had one earlier this week that hung up on me when I tried pressing zero to see if that got me anywhere. Touchier than humans.
Comcast once hung up on me because the system wanted to transfer me to a department whose phone system hadn't yet be set up in my region...the system force transfered me to a number that didn't exist and I was immediately disconnected.
My pharmacy is ridiculously short-staffed because of summer, so they're only open for 3 hours in the afternoon. But because everyone is calling in those 3 hours, it's so busy you don't even get put on hold, it just says the wait time is too long and to email them and hangs up, lmao.
Like how the registration button is always easier to find on a website vs the login button?
The worst is when they phrase the response as if there was just some slight, funny misunderstanding on the part of the machine; "Sorry, I didn't quite catch that! Did you want to..."
For some reason that one really drives my ire.
I've got a worse one than that- a fake typing sound effect. I've heard that one more than once.
Hold on while we look up your account.
Fuck you. How can it possibly take any time to query a SQL database in 2023? The first tenth of the second of you calling them they should have taken your number and pulled it up.
Love to scream at my phone because the fucking robot can't understand me.
Key presses are so simple! Why do I have to talk to the dumb fucking robot?!
It's astounding how universal this hatred is. No one likes these things except the people who think it saves on labor costs (which, does it even? they're replacing a menu that was already automated...)
I can live with hold music even for an hour because I can keep it in the background.
The absolute WORST is when they play some music for 30 seconds, then the music stops, cutting to some voice recording peddling some bullshit like "try out [Product]!" or "Use our new mobile app!". I can't focus on anything else with it in the background because I think each time it cuts the CSR might have picked up the line.
I admit I don't stand for that anymore. Every time I am told the person I need to speak to is working remotely or something I just remind them that they should have that sorted out by March 2020.
What I especially hate about those is that the VO is always on the "I'm super happy to tell you this" level, which just makes it ten times worse since it's a fucking ad.
My personal pet peeve is when they play an ad before giving you the menu options.
First, wait thirty seconds for them to tell me how great their mobile app is. Then listen to the options, pick one, find out I picked the wrong one, and have to go back up one level. Now I have to listen to the ad again before I can hear the options.
I don't care how proud you are of your app, I wouldn't be calling you if I could solve my problem with it.
I haven't had that one yet, but I'd be hitting 0 like no tomorrow and if it didn't work once, I'd keep doing it just to drown out the ad.
Also try screaming obscenities at it. Some voice controlled IVRs are programmed to route angry customers through faster.
FedEx has one of the worst phone support systems. It goes out of its way to tell you you're an idiot for wanting to speak to a human being because you can't possibly need any more information than what it has already told you. Then it proceeds to just hang up on you.
I got stuck on there the other day. If you tell the robot you want a human it instantly forwards you.
I once waited on hold for Microsoft support for 6.5 hours.
Fun fact: After hour 3 they stop playing music.
Fun fact: After hour 3 they stop playing music.
Thank you, for taking the hit for the rest of us.
That must've been an expensive phone call. I hate when they leave you waiting for ages and then charge extra even though it's wasting your time, not theirs.
Ah some companies charge for calling their customer support, which kind of sucks because there's a reason people call customer support (I guess it's to scare people off from actually contacting them?) and it could get very expensive. I'm glad that wasn't the case for you, though! That would've been super expensive.
Pro tip: If you start yelling the robot will forward you to a real person. I personally just yell my McDonalds order
Image Transcription:
A four-panel comic called Inky Rickshaw by Ricky Hawkins (inkyrickshaw.com @inkyrickshaw). The first panel shows a man in a blue shirt, yellow tie and glasses, holding a mug with the text BOSS MUG on it. He's talking to a woman seated at a desk with her back turned to the desk, wearing a white shirt and black skirt and looking up over her shoulder from her phone which she's holding in her hand. On the desk is a blue desk phone, which is ringing. The man is saying "What's that noise?", to which the woman is replying "It's the customer service line." The second panel shows a close-up on the man, behind which is a purple background with a flowchart on it. The flowchart starts with a rectangle which splits into two options resulting in circle or triangle. The circle also has two options which both results in rectangles. The left rectangle has three options, the left of which results in a skull, the bottom option splits into two results, one of which is the triangle on the second tier, and the other is a question mark, and the top option results in the initial rectangle. The second rectangle from the circle has two options, the bottom results in a circle and the top results in another rectangle. The circle has two options, one results in a triangle but the other's result is outside the panel, the triangle's only option's result is also outside the panel. The rectangle has only one option that also results in the triangle on the second tier. The man is saying "Are you saying someone actually navigated our labyrinthine phone tree..." The third panel also shows the close-up of the man, only this time he is leaning back slightly and has one eyebrow raised in consternation. On the green background behind him is a confusing line of sheet music that appears to be in an inconsistent meter. The man is saying "...and still hasn't hung up after a full hour of mind-melting hold music?" The woman is replying from off-screen "Yeah..." The final panel shows the man and woman once again, the man's hands are raised with his palms up in a pleading motion and his face shows shock as he says "WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM?!" The woman has now turned her chair around to face the desk and still-ringing phone, fear on her face as she replies "I don't know, but I'm scared."
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
This description is a little short, would you mind expanding on some of the points you’ve made? (Joking, excellent work)
I did consider whether or not to try and transcribe the notes in the sheet music but decided it was largely nonsense.
The other day I had called a company... They had a music playlist of different elevator musics... I was on hold for well over an hour... No song repeated.
I don't know if I should be impressed that there was no repeats... or if I should be scared to ever do more business with them since it's clear they thought about putting people on hold for longer than an hour.
I was once on hold with zoom for over 2 hours. I think they were very upset with me that I persisted. In the end they were zero help.
This comic is about zoom.
My high school had a CD player of hold music that played, it was stupidly easy to find. We stole the CD of musik and replaced it with one by Black Sabbath. That was a good day.
Systems like this are why I really appreciate the "Hold for me" feature on my phone. You just have to be quick when an actual human picks up, or they'll put you back on hold.
They just didn't try hard enough. I tried calling my energy provider. You have to call more than 5 times, to even get to the robot call system. Other times they line is just dead. Then you have to listen to adverts over adverts and at the end the line just goes dead again. Trying the same number with with landline or mobile also gives differrent results, I once or twice got to the point where I it might have ringed some phone. but after a couple of rings, the line just goes dead again.
My name is common enough and I got some court paper work sent to me by mistake meant for the other guy with my name. Ended up having to call the state level court and my local one. After hours finally get the right department and its a fax machine. I ended up having to fax messages back and forth.
It is a family name. Started with my great great grandfather on his arrival to Elis Island. Originally it was fraido zombenie but they changed it.
As someone with a hearing impairment, robot phone menus are the absolute worst. Sometimes I just can't understand what the options are and unlike a human, robots can't rephrase or enunciate differently. I will literally go out of my way to not do business with some companies based solely on whether or not I can do everything online.
I remember there was a post where someone said if you yell a bunch of profanity into the phone then you skip the wait. Never tried it yet but if someone wants to give it a try let me know if it works out.
It used to work at Apple tech support like a decade ago. I know bc I worked IT and our little program gave us a heads up about A: how long people had waited in cue and B: if they had cussed a.k.a were angry. When angry customers got to me there'd be a little angry emoji on the screen lol and those customers still tended to be cussing when I picked up. Anyway, I was always told that was how you skip cue and confirmed bc on days where the average wait time for a cx was say 20 minutes I'd get angry cussers that had only been in line for a few minutes. On the flip side I can confirm this doesn't skip cue for Verizon (noticeably) as I've cussed that robot 10 times to no avail. Dmv doesn't care either, but Apple once did.
Right. Then the AIs will both realize they can skip the call and just direct communicate.
God I love the Cisco Call Manager default hold music and I don't know why. I don't mind holding at all when it's this.
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