Please hold…

January 29th, 2009 by Hang

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the usability of phone systems after been on hold for 45 minutes now (and that’s not hyperbole, I can see it right there on my skype window). Frankly, I’ve always been stunned by how abysmally awful most phone systems are designed. Let me list the ways…

  • You call me when you’re done with holding. Rather than have people sit around listening to call music, why not allow them to punch in my phone number and have you call me when you’re ready to talk to me?
  • Remember who I am. You call a number and it doesn’t know you from Adam. Caller ID exists, use it in an intelligent manner. If I called just 20 minutes ago and I told you my issue was with a notebook, not a cellphone. Shouldn’t you be able to use that to infer that my issue is STILL with a notebook? You told me 20 minutes ago to please listen carefully, some options have changed, I don’t need to hear it again.
  • Never ask me the same thing twice. If I told my address to the last person, don’t make me tell it again to the next person. If I told it to you last month, just ask to confirm it’s still the same, don’t make me repeat it. If I told it to the automated system, don’t again ask me to tell it to the human being.
  • Remove the cruft from the system. Pare down your voice prompts to the barest minimum possible. Don’t add a word that’s unnecessary. As a HCI person, it was hammered into us that users don’t read anything so be sparse with your dialogs. Well, users hate hearing stuff even more.
  • Give me feedback. Tell me what position I am in the queue and how long my expected wait time will be. Don’t leave me in the dark.
  • Provide me a text version of your phone tree. Don’t make me wait for all your options to be said out loud, put up your phone tree on a website in text format so I can skip through all the junk and get to where I want to go.

The general level of usability in phone systems is depressingly low and doesn’t seem to have gotten significantly better over the years which is a pity because they could be much less aggravating than they currently are.

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