Thank you for calling the FTC…

I love well designed phone system menus.

Unfortunately, the Caller Experience when calling the Federal Trade Commission is not one of those well designed systems.

My main complaint is this:
After listening to the entire Auto-Attendant menu (which is quite confusing in itself!), it gives the option “To repeat this menu, press *”. What happens when you press *?
“Thank you for calling…goodbye!”

Have you tested your phone system lately? Do you know what your customers experience everyday when calling your company?

Having options listed in your message that don’t match up with your phone system programming is extremely frustrating to your callers.

Farther down in the Auto-Attendant tree:
“You have selected to hear information about ______. If this is not what you wanted, please press 0 to hear the entire list of subjects available.”

Pressing 0 yields this encouraging message:
“Sorry, no one is available to help you right now. Goodbye!”

It’s tempting to pin this inefficiency on the fact that the FTC is a government office, and therefore not too concerned about the Caller Experience. After all, there is no competition, right?

But far too often, we are calling and testing business with these same types of issues. Companies that really do care about doing business with you…they’ve just overlooked some very important areas of customer interaction.

So take a moment now and try your Auto-Attendant options. Do they send your call where it says it’s sending you?

One Response to “Thank you for calling the FTC…”

  1. Dave Young says:

    This is something that every business owner should put on their calendar and do at least every 6 months. Just call in and go through all the options. It avoids embarrassment in the eyes of customers and it tells employees that you care and sets a proper example.

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