Quick Post: Let the customers press the numbers.
I called PayPal this evening to ask a question about my account. The experience was fairly positive overall, but actually getting to a human drove me crazy. The system wasn’t fully saying out the options (it’d cut itself off and say it couldn’t understand me) and there was no option to press a number. It didn’t take long before I started speaking very slowly and deliberately (sounding like an idiot) at this voice activated IVR. I couldn’t get it to work, so I resorted to pushing “0″ several times.
The problem was that PayPal’s IVR didn’t give me any alternatives. I had to use the voice activated system. And the voice activated system didn’t work as well as it could have or should have. Both of these problems are serious problems. They made an otherwise okay customer service experience frustrating at best. When designing any type of system (especially phone systems, which are notorious for having such difficulties), include alternatives whenever possible. You never want to force customers to do anything any one way (especially when the possibility of running into problems is so prevalent). It makes for a better system that’s far more reliable.
Edit: Apparently, this was posted as a draft instead of a finalized post. My apologies.
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