I attempted to phone up the TV License people today to change over my Direct Debit details over to a different bank account. It's an automated system that uses speech recognition to work out what you are saying.
It started well. I read out as clearly as I could the license number, which was then read back to me correctly, then I read out the new bank details which it also got correct. However, it all fell apart at the final hurdle when it asked for a telephone number. I gave my number twice - the system got it wrong by one digit both times and then decided to give up and put me on hold for about fifteen minutes to wait for a real person to take the details all over again.
I'm usually quite keen on clever new tech, but not if it's utterly pointless like this. If they want to save money on paying lots of people to work in a call centre, their automated system could simply accept numerical input from the tried and tested telephone keypad.
I bet they paid a fortune to have this unreliable new system developed and it's people like me who pay their TV License who are funding it.
TV License phone system
Categories:
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://keithjudge.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/26
9 Comments
Leave a comment
Categories
- Books (11)
- Cars (2)
- Charity (2)
- Comedy (2)
- Crime (3)
- Cycling (5)
- DIY (1)
- Environmentalism (1)
- Film (12)
- Food (6)
- Games (10)
- Games Development (3)
- Guildford (2)
- Health (6)
- Holidays (11)
- London (1)
- Meta (10)
- Money (4)
- Music (3)
- Parenthood (4)
- Random (7)
- Religion (1)
- Science (2)
- Shopping (3)
- Technology (24)
- Television (10)
- Wedding (2)
- Women (2)
- Work (1)
Monthly Archives
- May 2011 (1)
- April 2011 (2)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2010 (1)
- December 2009 (1)
- November 2009 (1)
- October 2009 (2)
- September 2009 (1)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (2)
- May 2009 (4)
- April 2009 (3)
- March 2009 (2)
- February 2009 (2)
- January 2009 (5)
- November 2008 (1)
- October 2008 (1)
- September 2008 (2)
- August 2008 (1)
- July 2008 (2)
- June 2008 (2)
- April 2008 (6)
- March 2008 (5)
- February 2008 (2)
- January 2008 (1)
- December 2007 (1)
- November 2007 (3)
- August 2007 (1)
- July 2007 (2)
- June 2007 (7)
- May 2007 (4)
- April 2007 (7)
- March 2007 (9)
- February 2007 (7)
- January 2007 (12)
- December 2006 (7)
- November 2006 (8)
- October 2006 (3)
OpenID accepted here
Learn more about OpenID
About this Entry
This page contains a single entry by KeefJudge published on January 19, 2007 3:45 PM.
A pint? That’s very nearly an armful! was the previous entry in this blog.
A Confederacy of Dunces is the next entry in this blog.
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.
Oi!! What's with all this moderating comments? Pah.. There's no use having a site like this if yer only gonna allow nice comments :)
PS: Bill, if yer reading this, drop me a mail!
No surprises there dude. I've never met a voice recognition system that works even 70% of the way. I find it hard to believe that you managed to make it that far before it stuffed up on you!
I've never had a good experience with one, and I don't think I will for a very long time. What's even worse about this is that it's a lame attempt to get people off phones so that it's cheaper to 'service' you - yet it fails consistently, and as a result you still need to keep people on to handle the millions of people who have issues using the new system.
"After the tone, please speak your name CLEARLY.... *beep*"
"Keith Judge"
"Did you say 'Osama Bin Laden'?"
Malc, the comment moderation is so the site doesn't get spammed to hell. I'm currently deleting about 10 comments a week advertising penis enlargement pills, etc.
"I’m currently deleting about 10 comments a week advertising penis enlargement pills"
Well some of us might find that useful!
I was wondering where all my posts were going!
But seriously folks....
Keef, install/enable Akismet spam protection (if you haven't already). It does all of that stuff for ya!
Yeah, I installed Askimet a couple of days ago. It seems to be doing a great job and doesn't make it any harder for people to post real comments (I hate those stupid "type the letters in this distorted image" things).
I was initially a little wary of it as it looked like you had to sign up for a blog on wordpress.com, but I found out you can just get the API key alone - which is nice.
Yeah it does a great job, and I really like it. It's stopped over 600 spam messages for me so far.
FYI, the stupid "type the letters in this distorted image" thing you're referring to is commonly called a captcha!
Were you drunk at the time Keith? Or maybe it was that scouse twang that confused the poor computer.
I was phoning from work, so I could have been drunk at the time ;-)