I noticed an interesting change to the Walt Disney World reservation line when I called this morning to update our honeymoon reservation – instead of being prompted to “Press 1 for the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida; 2 for Disneyland Resort in California…” I was told to speak my choices. I’m not sure exactly when this change took place, but the system was still touch-tone only when I first made our honeymoon reservations so it must’ve been within the last month or so…
I’ll be honest and admit that I normally hate these kinds of automated systems with a passion – our cable company uses one that rarely ever works, and one of the reasons I actually switched from Sprint to Verizon Wireless was because their IVR never understood what I was trying to say. I think the problem with these, though, could be that when calling one of those companies, it’s usually for some type of support and I’m already angry or upset, meaning I’m not really in the mood to think about whether I’m speaking clearly and succinctly so that the computer understands me!
That said, I was pretty impressed by Disney’s system – it understood every word I said perfectly, even when I said “update reservation” and it was looking for “change reservation” as the key phrase, and thankfully, I never once heard, “I’m sorry – I don’t understand that command. Please speak your request clearly so that I can direct you to the proper group.” Other than actually having to speak my selection instead of press buttons, it was exactly the same conversation as before (i.e. “If you’ve visited the Walt Disney World resort in the last ten minutes, please press 1…”).
Now if only I could get Disney to have a chat with my cable company…