Introduce man-in-a-middle: phone service (like Google Voice, Conferencing, etc). Used specifically for people calling tech/customer support and provide services to make that experience less painful.
Obvious things:
) Track the time things really take
) Record conversations (some thoughts around one-party and two-party consent here, but if they say 'this conversation can be recorded', you can probably record it too)
) Everybody calling the same tech-support number is also in the same text chat conference. Gives them something to do and also creates a sense of community around shared pain. Maybe even some solutions.
) Give them some pausable social games to play. E.g. 'Hangman with a 'customer support' rep hanging and swear words to guess? :-)
) Integrate GetHuman
) Provide estimated Queuing time based on sample of people using the service
Less obvious things:
) Allow injecting crisp English/whatever voice commands to the system who expects voice navigation. Helps all those for whom English is second/third language (see http://youtu.be/fhE2WgHIuzc)
) Offer AutoMute (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/telephone_moni...)
) Provide journalistic interface with statistics/breakdown
Allow people to say 'allow/disallow to be contacted for the story'
) Visualise call tree and let user click straight on the result (A company was started just around that couple of years back)
Making money
* Allow companies to place their agents into the call, like Comcast Cares
* Allow NLP api hook to promote specific customers in the queue (or every customer using the service....)
* Allow customers to pay for anonymous accounts (why?)
* Allocated inbound number that automatically records that ==nobody ever called back==
* Let users do Amazon Turk tasks while they wait as a way to pay for the service
Introduce man-in-a-middle: phone service (like Google Voice, Conferencing, etc). Used specifically for people calling tech/customer support and provide services to make that experience less painful.
Obvious things: ) Track the time things really take ) Record conversations (some thoughts around one-party and two-party consent here, but if they say 'this conversation can be recorded', you can probably record it too) ) Everybody calling the same tech-support number is also in the same text chat conference. Gives them something to do and also creates a sense of community around shared pain. Maybe even some solutions. ) Give them some pausable social games to play. E.g. 'Hangman with a 'customer support' rep hanging and swear words to guess? :-) ) Integrate GetHuman ) Provide estimated Queuing time based on sample of people using the service
Less obvious things: ) Allow injecting crisp English/whatever voice commands to the system who expects voice navigation. Helps all those for whom English is second/third language (see http://youtu.be/fhE2WgHIuzc) ) Offer AutoMute (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/telephone_moni...) ) Provide journalistic interface with statistics/breakdown Allow people to say 'allow/disallow to be contacted for the story' ) Visualise call tree and let user click straight on the result (A company was started just around that couple of years back)
Making money * Allow companies to place their agents into the call, like Comcast Cares * Allow NLP api hook to promote specific customers in the queue (or every customer using the service....) * Allow customers to pay for anonymous accounts (why?) * Allocated inbound number that automatically records that ==nobody ever called back== * Let users do Amazon Turk tasks while they wait as a way to pay for the service
And another page of thoughts.....