Talking to a recorded voice

I don’t know about other phone services but I have experienced the HDFC's phone banking system and I’ve learnt that it is not designed for the ordinary. No weak hearted, short tempered or impatient man can handle it. It is designed for only those who, lets just say, HAVE it in them.

For the uninitiated, it starts with this long welcome speech at the end of which it says “press star to continue” Now, why would anyone hold on to the phone and listen to a long welcome message in 2 languages if he/she did not wish to continue!!!??

Anyway, you press “star”. You hear the mechanical voice list out a menu of options. In this set of options, strangely there is no option that leads you to talk to an executive. So, if that’s the motive behind your call, you’d be flummoxed. To make matters more trying, the 3 options that go like this

“for information on your account dial…”,
“for mutual fund transactions dial…”
“for information on loan products dial…”

does not tell you, for instance, what you should do if you want to pay bills.

So, you’d give up or you’d use the theory of elimination and choose the first option.

Further, the numbers that need to be dialed to avail the options are bizarre unconnected numbers. “If you want to continue in English press zero three…” and so on. ‘Zero three’ is like this specially crafted password. If you don’t hear it the first time you logically press 1 since it is the first on the list of options and get slapped with a “Sorry…..” The call gets cut. Some of you will decide, ‘okay lets not get upset’. You take a deep breath and redial.

“Welcome to HDFC’s phone banking service HDFC ki phone banking service mein aapka swaagat hai press * to continue aage badne kay liye * dabaein…”

You have to then press ‘star’ again as they would still want to know if you wished to continue. It is quite possible that you stumbled upon this spider web of a recorded call by mistake. At least, the designers of the message think so.

You finally learn that if you listen to “information about your account” irrespective of whether you are interested in knowing it, they present you, at the end of it, the option of “for any other transaction press…” Viola!! And you hear the golden words “for bill payment…”

It doesn’t end here; you still have to type in your customer identification number and your telelohone identification number which is followed by a long message which says this:

“If your account number is __________________press ____ “
“for any other account number press____“

Now an account number is usually a 13 digit number….you often know that it is not your account number after hearing the first digit itself but still have to helplessly listen to the WHOLE dragging message before you know what you need to do.

Yes. After 15 minutes of trial and errors, you do manage to pay your bills but still it doesn’t quite go with HDFC's tag line of “we understand your world”

A few simple modifications is all it will take to do the trick - I wonder why they havn't thought of it.