Curious Creature

You hear the whispers coming out of co-workers, hushed tones with odd inflections repeating words like ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘customer service’. Is this some weird conversation with a loved one? Then it dawns on you that your co-worker is busy navigating the world of a voice-recognition-based phone system.

Almost everyone has used one of these systems by now. Many companies are using them these days and the trend seems to be moving away from number-based (”please hit 1 if you require immediate medical attention”) to voice-recognition-based (”please say yes if you require immediate medical attention”) phone menu navigation systems. The question is why?

There is nothing inherently better about these systems and I’d argue that in fact they are worse. In most cases hitting a number on the keypad would be quicker. In all cases it is certainly not as disruptive as navigating a voice-based menu system. I suppose there is one situation in which a voice-based system could be better and that would be a menu that gets very deep with options.

With a voice-based system it would probably be easier to skip levels of the menu depending on what the person is saying. Something like “pay my bill” could certainly save time if the keypad-based option required inputting more than 2 numbers to navigate down in to the menu system. In my experience with these systems though I am not seeing this savings.

Most of the systems have voice input that is closely tied to menus that would be equivalent to the keypad-based systems. I just don’t see the savings in time and see a lot more aggravation. I have had, on more than one occassion, had to repeat myself multiple times to be understood. Higher levels of background noise really mess with the voice recognition. In some instances I have even been transferred to a human because the voice recognition can’t understand what I’m saying.

Keep the keypad-based systems guys. They are the less annoying option.

I just finished taking a look at the Pickens Plan and it has me scratching my head.

It states:

We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity. Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel — reducing our dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third.

Why would we want to build the infrastructure to support natural gas-powered vehicles? Keep the natural gas as the power station where it belongs. The infrastructure to support electric vehicles has been in places for ages now and electric vehicles would account for the vast majority of driving that people do.

The answer is staring us in the face. Why do we keep ignoring it?