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IN THE EARLY PART OF THIS DECADE, a great many companies spent months and millions of dollars trying to make their interactive voice response (IVR) systems more "personable." They created fictional characters-complete with their own names, identities, interests, and personal histories-to serve as their corporate voices.
These cybernetic consumer service operators, with catchy names like Claire and Simone, captured the attention not only of customers, but also of speech industry watchdogs who touted them as the latest and greatest way to make a cold, impersonal interaction with a computerized system more personal. These really well-put-together software models were just what the industry needed to replace the cold, synthetic-sounding robotic voices that previously told callers which buttons on their phones to push.
The problem was that "some companies overdid it, trying to make it sound like a conversation with a real person," says Jim Milroy, director of creative services at West Interactive, a voice self-service solutions provider. "It's just silly because everyone knows it's not a real person."
Customers calling in with a problem on their bill don't care that the "person" on the other end of the phone is a 30-year-old, blonde housewife with a master's degree in healthcare, he argues. Moreover, "the catch phrases became comical and the responses became canned, not natural," all of which have contributed to all the bad things people heard about IVRs.
Julie, the character launched in May 2002 as the voice behind Amtrak's tollfree 1-800-USA-RAIL automated phone line for checking train schedules, ticket prices, or reservations, was even lampooned in a skit on NEC's "Saturday Night Live" not too long ago, despite the fact that her warm and pleasantsounding voice greets each of Amtrak's 22 million calls a year with the simple words "Hi. This is Amtrak. I'm Julie."
As is the case with Julie and a number of other popular IVR characters, including Virgin Mobile USA's Simone, Sprint's Claire (which has since been discontinued), and Bell Canada's Emily (which it launched in 2003 for its 310-BELL customer service line at a $10 million price tag), "the callers are talking to a machine, and they know they're talking to a machine," adds Mark Manz of Worldly Voices, a voice prompt recording service provider.
"People calling into an...