IVR Deconstructed

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are like a hundred and fifty browsers out there these days. For a long time, it was Internet Explorer that dominated the space, but in recent years some new guys have come along and said what’s up. In fact, one just took over IE’s spot as the top browser.

I’ve been trying out the various browsers over the last year just for my own edification. I’ve spent a couple months each on IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome.

Supposedly, there was a study done that showed people who use IE are on average less intelligent than people who use Chrome and Opera. I have no idea how they figured that out and/or made that assumption, but hearing about the study actually introduced me to Opera, which I’d never even heard of before.

So, not wanting to seem less intelligent and having used IE (like everyone else) for years, I started testing the others out. What I found was that while they all do their thing well, every single one of them had something that annoyed me.

IE. Ah, IE. You’ve been around forever, you’ve been very, very popular. Too popular, in fact. Way too popular. You have bugs. Like viruses. It’s not secure and I don’t trust it because it’s been hacker prey for too long.

Firefox. Been around a bit longer than some of the other guys, but it doesn’t seem to have the same security issues that IE has. What it did to annoy me was block everything in sight.

Safari. Also not brand new. And, honestly, there wasn’t anything that bothered me all that much about Safari other than the kind of weird layout.

Opera. “Ooooh, Operaaaah.” It even sounds smart. Actually, I like Opera a lot, especially the appearance, which is kind of mod. It can be weird on certain security things, though, which probably has more to do with banking websites not being designed for Opera because it’s so new.

Chrome. The cool kid. Chrome is cool, especially the layout, which is clean like Opera. My complaint about Chrome—typical Google, they make you jump through extra hoops to get tasks done, which gives it kind of an outdated feel sometimes.

BUT. It turns out that Chrome is more than just the cool kid—it’s the browser that just overtook IE as the most popular. According to MSNBC, Chrome 15 now has 23.6% of the marketplace to IE’s 23.5%.

I know. Pretty close. But the people have spoken. As for me, I use Chrome and Opera the most now (not because of the intelligence thing, I swear—I just like them better overall.)

Consumers are getting more and more used to IVR systems in their daily lives (checking bank account and credit card statements, et cetera), but a study from the International Journal of Selection and Assessment reports that job applicants don’t have a problem with IVR systems either.

Researchers from Portland State University, Kenexa and Purdue University collaborated to understand how job applicants reacted to different selection screening methods.

By different methods, I mean face-to-face, telephone or IVR. The researchers created an identical script for each method and performed the screenings on a sample population to see how the applicants took it.

What they found was that it didn’t seem to matter so much to people whether a company called them in for a pre-screening interview, just called them over the phone or did it through an IVR.

…what is encouraging is that there were no differences between these labor-intensive and costly technologies and IVR…

According to the researchers, traditional hiring advertisements cost an average of $3,295 per hire, while online hiring only costs an average of $377 per hire.

Therefore, there does not appear to be any major negatives in terms of structural fairness among alternative screening devices, implying that organizations can make choices between screening methods based on other factors such as recruitment strategy or cost.

Which is a key point to make—the more options a company has for initial screening, the better off they are. It’s more costly and time-consuming for human resource departments to pre-screen applicants over the phone or especially to bring them in for face-to-face interviews.

According to the study, use of the Internet for screening applicants is the most cost-effective because companies can screen hundreds or thousands of applicants automatically. One knock was that older members of the workforce aren’t as Internet-savvy as the younger ones, limiting the field of respondents.

Regarding IVR, the study knocked IVR in “openness, treatment, two-way communication and reconsideration opportunity,” predictably. But IVR did just as well in every other category.

Click on the link if you’d like to read the report yourself

My mom has always been a big catalog shopper. Way back when (before I came along), it was the Sears Roebuck Catalog (the mailman’s nemesis). Since then it’s grown to L.L. Bean, Talbot’s, any number of other catalogs.

Going into my parents’ house has always been like going to a newsstand—there’s always magazines and catalogs on every side table. Which gives me something to do if I’m bored.

Seeing how much my mom loves catalog shopping, I’m not surprised she’s all into Internet shopping now. She honestly can’t get voicemail messages on her cell phone or even operate the landline cordless they have properly, but she can shop online.

And she’s right. I remember when I was a teenager she always wanted to take me to Marshalls or T.J. Maxx and I always hated it. As a hyper-sensitive teenager, I didn’t want any of my friends seeing me shopping there.

As an adult, though, I friggin’ love those stores. A store where you can get designer stuff for like half the price? Sign me up. I hate paying retail (something I didn’t understand when I wasn’t paying for things all those years ago).

And my mom is absolutely right about Internet shopping, too. It’s like a week-and-a-half before Christmas—I haven’t set foot in a mall, and won’t.

For me, it’s weird because I live 2,000 miles away from my family and can’t bring all the presents over when I go to visit for Christmas. No worries, though. I just have it all shipped to my parents’ house and wrap it when I get there.

It’s so easy. Honestly, I poke fun at my mom, but she’s got a couple things really, really right. It’s a digital world. Shop digital. Like my mom.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling for a nationwide ban on all cell-phone use by drivers. Basically, the only thing allowed would be communication devices installed by the manufacturer.

At Plum, we sell a product that’s ideal for vehicle use—you can’t surf the web while driving, but you can call an IVR system. Despite that, we wholly support the NTSB’s efforts on this.

To back up its argument, the NTSB has pointed to research done by Distraction.gov (national website) regarding driving while distracted. (I’ve included some of their statistics in italics).

In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in crashes involving driver distraction, and an estimated 448,000 were injured. Sixteen percent of fatal crashes and 20% of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving.

According to Distraction.gov, using a phone while driving distracts us manually (hands off the wheel), visually (eyes off the road) and cognitively (mind off driving).

Evidently, talking on a cell phone takes 37% of our brainpower away from our driving. Over a third.

Using a cell phone while driving - whether it’s hand-held or hands-free delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.

Drivers who use hand-held devices are 4 times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. Text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted.

Twenty-three times. According to Distraction.gov, the average text takes our eyes off the road for 4.6 seconds—at 55 mph, that’s the length of a football without watching where we’re going.

And hands-free phones aren’t that much better. It seems taking the hands away only takes the manual aspect of the equation away. The driver is still devoting over a third of their cognitive efforts towards something other than their driving.

So far, the research indicates that the cognitive distraction of having a hands-free phone conversation causes drivers to miss the important visual and audio cues that would ordinarily help you avoid a crash.

Part of the problem is that the states have jurisdiction over their own driving laws, so they’re all over the place. Supposedly national laws have come to Congress for votes but not gotten passed.

For the moment, it’s still in the hands of the states. While some have passed tough phone-related driving laws—most states have passed a no-texting law—many haven’t. You can check Distraction.gov (http://distraction.gov/content/get-the-facts/state-laws.html) to find out what your state’s laws (if any) are.

American Airlines has apologized to Alec Baldwin for asking him to leave a flight last week for playing Words With Friends. Sort of.

Days after the mishap, Baldwin made an impromptu appearance on Saturday Night Live to poke fun at the airline. He posed as the pilot of the flight and offered himself a very heartfelt apology.

This story says two things—one, our communications technologies these days are lightning quick; two, our celebrities these days have way, way too much money and entitlement (coming from an Alec Baldwin fan).

First the communications technology…Baldwin got kicked off the flight last Tuesday and the newswires immediately went ballistic with the story. Baldwin posted some tweets about it, then American Airlines responded on Facebook.

“Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving. #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt,” Baldwin tweeted.

And “last flight w American. Where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950’s find jobs as flight attendants.”

According to CBSNews, American Airlines said Baldwin…

…stood up “with the seat belt light still on for departure” and took his phone into the plane’s lavatory, the company continued.

“He slammed the lavatory door so hard, the cockpit crew heard it and became alarmed, even with the cockpit door closed and locked,” the airline’s post said.

The passenger was extremely rude to the crew, calling them inappropriate names and using offensive language,” it continued. “Given the facts above, the passenger was removed from the flight and denied boarding.”

Which brings me to the point that our celebrities have too much money and are too entitled.

Don’t get me wrong, Alec Baldwin is hilarious, but his shenanigans were…shenanigans. He wouldn’t turn off his mobile device because he was playing a game.

Instead, he tried to hide in the bathroom. Like a three-year-old. Maybe if everyone wasn’t always giving him whatever he wants all the time he wouldn’t act that way. Or he’s just crazy competitive about games (supposedly he is crazy competitive, actually—that I can actually understand).

Then, rather than turning off the game, he chose to leave the flight and get another one. Or maybe he wasn’t really given the option, it’s not entirely clear at the moment. But still. Only a rich person would get themselves kicked off a flight for refusing to turn off a game.

This weekend, Baldwin was on SNL making fun of the airline (and himself, theoretically). Check it out.