Rise of the machines...

4/17/2005 7:15:00 PM

So, I just called T-Mobile to make a payment and got their automated phone system.  Now, I deal with a fair number of these things and most of them really really suck.  But T-Mobile's system is really quite good.  In addition to having a logical (seemingly freeform) menu structure, the system has good recognition.  And the speech output is quite good-- it's obviously synthesized, but it sounds much better than systems that try to string together chunks of human speech.  And they got inflections right-- when a question is asked, the pitch of the voice subtly changes.

These systems obviously won't work for every situation, but let's just say that the future job prospects of working in a call center aren't too bright.  I can't wait for the drive-thru to move to this type of system.