Say “Bomb” or “Refund,” and you’ll speak to an operator all right.

I hope that Echelon is more accurate than this! “No officer, I said ‘When he does a gurn like that, his face looks like a bum.’ Not ‘gun’ and not ‘bomb’”

Dude, SBC, Cingular, my cable company, and now Kaiser Permanente is doing this crap too!
I’ve never felt such a connection with your comic strip!
You could always say nothing and wait until the operator connects.
What kills me about these things is that they use to achieve the same goal just by people hitting numbers on the phone.
These voice programs don’t take into consideration voice patterns, dialects, slang, voice tones…it’s too flawed for it to be an actual live program.
They could never do something like this in Cantanese because you could have something like “má, mã, mä, mà” - and from an engineering perspective, there’s just no damn way that could work.

Yet another common frustration. Since it does not focus on the internal details of user research, but rather reflects a commonly felt failure, this particular comic is one that could be appreciated far and wide all general audiences. (Something to think about.)

Some of my favorites:

“Hmmm, I didn’t get that let’s try again.”

and

“Let’s see if I got this right … you said ASSHOLE”

TellMe, the makers of these has done an amazing job with voice recognition, and I like these better than the key press (IVP) versions, but any system that does not offer access to an operator for cost cutting reasons highly risks keeping me as a customer …. And I’m looking at you Amercian Express (aka Ameriprise) when I’m saying this ;>