Automated Customer Service Systems ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. Some of you may not like the gist of the explanation of why companies use automated customer service and so on. But we felt that you should know what you are dealing with in these situations and how they work. The fact that the live operator is not available on a automated phone system is done by design. We can tell you this from first hand experience. We have consulted and managed enough projects for creating IVR programs. That is the industry term for an automated telephone system.

A. The same applies to internet companies that refuse to provide a telephone number for customers to contact them if need be. A scary thought but we don't dictate business ethics. Before going too far, we must mention. A business is here to make a profit. In some cases, they have to report to shareholders too. Which means they are constantly looking at the price of various services in order to do business. On the other hand, the anti-corporation types fail to realize that these very same profit seeking corporations provide jobs to people who need them to feed their own families. Some corporations were actually built on blood and sweat too. It costs a company X $ amount of money to build a automated telephone program. Some have these computer platforms inhouse to handle the calls, but most will outsource this to another company that specializes in that field. We will say a basic set up is about $7500 in general to even have a computer telephone system. On average, a company will have to commit to using 10,000 minutes a month as a minimum with a 1 year contract. Charges per minute can range from 10 cents per minute to 30 cents per minute depending on the complexity of the program, options avialable to the customer, etc. The more options available, the less the price per minute since the customer will be on the phone line longer. Which in turn gives the vendor of this service more revenue. Now when they add the live operator option, for all calls that are transferred to the live operatior, they have to pay "transport fees" in addition to the per minute rate. Which means the call is now carried from the vendor company's platform and transferred via long distance to a customer service center. But there are two ways this transfer can be done. A "Blind" transfer means the computer platform will transfer the call and if the line is busy so be it. In this case there are no transport fees as the call is transferred to customer service line without regard to the status of the phone line. The other type is a "connected" transfer which means that the computer checks to see when the line isn't busy and then will transfer the call but still holds the line the entire time you are transferred thus giving even more revenue to the vendor company since their phone lines are actually carrying the call and billing continues. About half of the companies will use the second option if they offer a customer service rep as an option. And the companies are charged a fee for each transfer. They may pay as much as 25 cents per transfer in addition to the other accumulated fees. Companies use automated customer service systems to do both of the above. Offer customer service at the lowest possible price and give stockholders more profit on their shares. What better way for a company to disguise the loss of revenue by putting in a budget cut on a backend process that will affect 20% of the people that use customer service. Depending on the companies customer base, this could be a very small amount of people affected and they have sucessfully implemented the loss of revenue without affecting profit. So, lets say that AT&T wanted a system with all the bells and whistles, but only wanted to spend about half the dollars necessary for the appropriate system. The vendor might put together something like AT&T has NOW, where you cannot find your way out of the system or to a humanoid, while the vendor is making more money on this, AT&T is loosing customers BECAUSE of this system. Later AT&T figures it out and coughs up the big bucks for the right system, but they have already lost millions of customers. The vendor doesn't care cause he's got his money both ways.

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