DHL Automated Voice System Sucks

Being a professional photographer who has worked for a lot of large, heartless corporations, I have always been required to send my work off to some distant processing plant. When I first started, FedEx was the company of choice, which was nice, as you could find a FedEx drop box just about anywhere. Once FedEx put their boxes at every Post Office in America, it became really easy to find a drop box. But once this happened, the brain-trust I work for switched to DHL.

So far as I can tell, DHL does a good job of getting the packages to the plant. Their Drivers are courteous enough, and I have found a drop box close to home, though it is hidden in a tiny clutter of office buildings-and not as easy to find as The Post Office.

In the good old days-a few months ago-DHL had a standard IVR telephone answering system. Interactive Voice Response is the standard boring Press 1 for English-Press 27 for Klingon kind of system almost everyone uses. It worked. All I had to do was press a few buttons on the phone and I could schedule a pickup and be on my way. But No More.

DHL decided that having an IVR system that worked perfectly was not good enough. So they scraped it. It has been replaced with DHL’s New Voice Automated System. There are a few happy notes of muzak and a very mellow sounding voice that asks you to tell it what you want to do. Only I can never get the damned thing to understand what I am saying. Now I am not exactly James Earl Jones, I don’t have a commanding voice and perfect innunciation.

After two or three attempts to figure out what I am saying, the little robot at DHL’s Automated Voice System dumps me to a Real Person. These people are nice and all sound very bored doing a job that used to be done very well by an IVR system that is no more.

Am I the only person using DHL that thinks thier Voice Automated System sucks? Why did they change from the old system? Are there that many people that can’t press a button on their phone who need packages shipped? How about just offering the option of using the old system? It is a minor annoyance, it only take a few minutes to talk to someone and give them all the same information that I just gave the Stupid Robot who can’t understand what I am saying. It’s just that with the old system I would already been done and off to something else.

I wonder what FedEx’s 800 number sounds like?