[LINK] Telstra directory "assistance" - IVR - Customer Servic e Flop

[Chirgwin, Richard]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Russell Ashdown [mailto:russell at ashdown.net.au] 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 7:32 PM
> To: Link
> Subject: [LINK] Telstra directory "assistance" - IVR - 
> Customer Service Flop

A flop? Heavens no, Russell: a perfect piece of behaviour engineering. In
the Senate estimates last week (or the one before?), Telstra was quizzed on
the shrinking directory assistance call centre numbers. The answer: people
are going online to lookup phone numbers; whitepages.com.au is booming;
therefore fewer call centre ops needed.

So if you really hate directory assistance, the SR system is achieving its
intended outcome ...

RC

> 
> 
> I am getting sick and tired of the Telstra directory "assistance" IVR 
> experiment.  I am interested to know if it just me, or are other 
> Linkers experiencing this annoyance?
> 
> Not once in the (is it) three years of operation of the IVR has it 
> been able to find a correct number for me.  Each and every time I 
> have dialled Telstra's directory "assistance", I have had to speak my 
> query to the IVR system and about 99.9% of the time the response is 
> "...please hold while you are transferred to an operator".  The other 
> 00.1% of the time I get "...Say 'yes' if you want xyz..." ( I wanted 
> abc ) "...please hold while you are transferred to an operator..." 
> 
> Once I am connected to an operator, I need to repeat my query one 
> again before getting the information I am seeking.
> 
> Russell
> 
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