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Posted by Bill's News on 11/29/05 21:06
Biz wrote:
> "Smaleck" <cheapNOSPAMthrills@NOSPAMfuse.net> wrote in message
> news:Xns971CC70208F5Adinnereightpm@63.223.7.253...
>> Stan Brown <the_stan_brown@fastmail.fm> wrote in
>> news:MPG.1df552adb7f6ab66989cbc@news.individual.net:
>>
>>> Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:11:04 -0500 from Smaleck
>>> <cheapNOSPAMthrills@NOSPAMfuse.net>:
>>>> One time I called and asked for 'electronics', when someone
>>>> answered I asked him if he knew anything about DVD's...he said
>>>> he'd
>>>> transfer my call to the 'men's dept.':-@
>>>
>>> Perhaps you ought to practice not mumbling.
>>>
>>
>> Well, Stan, if I mumbled or had any sort of speech impediment
>> you might have a point there. But considering that I once made
>> my living speaking and actually tend to overenunciate rather
>> than mumble, I have to conclude that your defense, without
>> knowledge
>> of the facts, of said Wal-Mart employee must be based on a similar
>> experience of your own...as the ill-informed employee of a multi-
>> national company whose lack of familiarity with the product led
>> you to steer a potential customer to a competitor.
>>
>> Cheers!:-)
>
> DVD and BVD sound almost identical when spoken on the phone,
> especially if you consider there was probably a lot of background
> noise in the store. I cant believe anyone would bother considering
> this mixup was due to having trouble hearing instead of what you
> assumed meaning they were idiots...way to go...
Soundex, a pseudo-phonetic system first used in the 1800's, helped
clerical personnel select the proper surname despite different
spellings (and possibly mis-spellings).
For some time, about a hundred year later, computer programmers
utilized this "algorithm" for telephone support phonetic lookup, but
it was a very big mistake. I'm guessing that the poor telephone
jockey utilizing such a system would often guide DVD queries to the
clothing department, merely because BVD comes before DVD
alphabetically.
The original system required clerks to be trained in the peculiarities
of Soundex, as it used a letter for its initial value, followed by
numbers assigned to replace subsequent "sounds" So the clerk had to
be aware that Ph & F, Gn & N, Kn & N, or the oft unpronounced leading
H could cause problems only they could address. Some programmatic
implementations utilized a number, rather than a letter, for the
initial character and lessened this burden - but then, the clerk had
to discern among the proffered possibilities.
Later algorithms improved the clerks' lot immensely, tho ultimately in
phone support it is the savvy of the clerk that surpasses the
algorithms - and let's face it, outsourced phone response has its
drawbacks for a given language. The fact that a retailer, or any
business for that matter, would allow a regionally linguistic
challenged clerk to represent them on the telephone is sufficiently
astounding in and of itself.
"The customer is always right" and "get it right the first time" have
melted into the melting pot of languages that is now many metro areas
around the globe.
Mumble indeed!!!
And some of the "prompted" answering systems include employee scoring,
so that the DVD caller who was routed to the BVD department and then
hung up, only to call a competitor, is noted in the system as a
SUCCESSFULL handling of a call for help. The linguistically
challenged employee gets a MERIT raise some years later ;-0)
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