Ok, if there is one thing that drives me up the wall, it is the voice recognition systems that you now have the navigate through when calling many customer service numbers. Am I the only one who finds the idea of being forced to talk to a machine insulting? It is like they are saying “hey, you aren’t important enough to talk to a live person, however we think you should have to talk to a machine that won’t be able to help you.”
I much prefer the good old fashioned “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” to having to speak to a computer. It just seems a lot more efficient to me. Plus if you are calling from the office, this way the entire office doesn’t know your business.
I realize some people might actually prefer the voice recognition system, but how about giving users the choice in the opening menu. If they can do “press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish”, I think this is a reasonable request.