Wednesday, January 18, 2006

For service in English, press 1 or say "English"

I find the technical support being offered by telephone companies extremely annoying. Most often when you call a companies telephone support line, you rarely speak to someone directly. You are asked a series of questions that take you anywhere between five to ten minutes to answer. At the end of these questions, you end up getting a customer service representative anyways to help you with your problem.

Now when you call Rogers wireless support, you are greeted with voice automated support instead of pressing buttons on your phone. I needed to change my plan, and only a customer service representative could help me complete this task. I knew it would be a waste of time to answer the questions being asked by the voice automated service. So, I decided to use the following plan.
Rogers: Thank you for calling Rogers. How can I help you with today ?
Ozair: AgaBagagaBooggga
Rogers: Sorry, I did not get that. What can I help you with today
Ozair: AgaBagagaBooggga
Rogers: You seem to be having problems. I will connect you with a customer service representative.
Ozair: Yeh! (ahem) Thank you.
For kicks, I'll sometimes respond to the voice automated support with my funny Pakistani accent. It provided a few minutes of entertainment to my family. As Kip from Napoleon Dynamite once said
I Love Technology.


9 comments:

Bilal Shirazi said...

Calling the Rogers IVR, just say operator operator operator and you'll get put through, in case you have to call from work and ooogabooga isn't appropriate.

For any 'Merikans out there
http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

--B

Huma said...

Ninety percent of times when you do this, the operator has to transfer you to someone else.

The point of the IVR is to get your call directed to the appropriate person the first time. Most people find the IVRs annoying, but sitting on the phone waiting through the long queues is also annoying. So, I'd rather talk to the right person the first time.

Anonymous said...

that is an extemely good idea

Ali said...

I seriously dread having to call any automatic telephone service for anything. I haven't changed my billing address for a number of places for months now simply because I don't want to deal with the whole telephone experience. I find it thoroughly annoying and painful.

I need a secretary to take care of all this kind of stuff for me.

Ozair said...

Bilal: Thanks for the tip, hopefully that ends my AgaBagagaBooggga'ing career.

Huma: From my experiences, I personally find it easier to get directed to the right person if you talk to someone directly. Your right, usually the first person you talk to cannot help you. They say:

I do not have access to your data.

Which really bugs me, cause of the lack of integration with their IT architecture ... Bilal will understand.

What I find is that you usually get forwarded to the other departments direct line (416 line) rather than from the 1-800 line.

Rogers support should give you the option of pressing numbers instead of listening to the IVR, cause it is annoying. I remember waiting for my flight once in the airport lounge, it was dead silent and then suddenly the woman beside me started shouting words every 5-10 seconds ... "billing", "minutes", "voicemail". People glanced at her in annoyance.

Saqib: don't be calling my house "agabagagaboogga", i'll tell your mom.

Saira: That finger incident is one of the nasty stories I have heard. This is one the advantages of this halal thing we follow, we can avoid these types of fast-food restaurants.

Ali: Like I said before, when your done with law school, I'll do your admin stuff, if you pay me your lawyer salary ;-)

Golu said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Golu said...

Once, I was actually glad to hear that I couldnt be attended to because of Salah. I got the following response when I called our phone company during Maghrib:

"We're sorry, all our attendants are currently on Salah break. Please call back after 10 to 20 minutes."

Later I found out that all the attendants were non-muslim and they use the break to light up!

Ozair said...

LOL ... Golu, that is a funny story. I can somewhat relate to those guys who were lighting up ... well, not the lighting up part.

My team at work was having lunch with our director who was visiting our team. We ordered pizza and I asked the co-worker next to me to get me a veggie slice. My director saw this and asked:

Are you vegetarian ?

I hesitated to answer not wanting to take the time to explain this halal issue, so I responded with an "ummm yeah ... but". Before, I could finish, she mentioned she was also vegetarian, and was impressed that I shared her views.

I responded with "Oh yeah, I totally think its wrong to kill animals not properly" ... I myself felt relieved, having earned brownie points with my director ... hmm, some might say I lied, but I would say that I am vegetarian ... when I eat out.

Golu, welcome to the blogging world, the newest way to waste your time

Golu said...

Thats hilarious... You know your situation could work both ways; What if she finds you eating Popeye's or something someday? What will you say then!

Thnx for the welcome -- I must admit, the only reason I started was because my brother refused to have private conversations. Now, I can only reach him through comments.