Comments on: Microsoft backs GetHuman customer service plan

Initiative is designed to set industrywide standards for customer service; companies can advertise compliance.

[UnnDunn]

Thank god

At last, someone has realized how bad phone-support is these days.

[bmo99]

Not sure what good that will do

Not sure what good that will do, I still will not be able to understand the persons English that answers my call!

[alkolkin]

Wonderful News!! How do we help?

My first question is how do we help and get our input to Microsoft and the other companies?

How do we get companies like ABIT, ASUS, Check Point, CISCO, Dell, EMC, Gigabyte, HP, Symantec (the worst of the bunch in my view), and other large compaanies to participate?

Geezer Guy

[Hardrada]

with your pocketbook

the article does a good job providing a high-level overview, but this basically comes down to agreeing on standard and acceptable menu-trees for call center automation, especially to avoid common issues such as cycles where a customer ends up going in circles through menu options they've already navigated.

Basically, lots of companies cobble together their call systems without spending much time thinking about how an already pissed-off customer will react when they're asked to input information and then asked for the same information immediately by the first person they reach.

Ideally all companies would use the standard as a template for designing the menu trees, but it is possible to imagine different tiers of standards compliance leading to something a company could market (e.g. "support systems meet VMX 2.0 compliance"). Given that most companies want to avoid spending any money on support, this is at least a relatively low-cost way to improve things.