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The first minute of every phone call is torture now

theatlantic.com

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Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#261

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

bbarn wrote: post #246
tristor wrote: post #188

I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…

I get the same issues I did in the US here in Iceland, fwiw. I get the added bonus of no longer being able to use many voice activated features because names aren't phonetically pronounced or simply have characters that aren't recognized by CarPlay. "Call Þórunn mobile." "I don't have a Thorin." "Call Porun mobile" "I don't have a porun".

Not that you should have to do this, but you can tell Siri (using your own voice) how to pronounce your contacts’ names. She’ll transcribe it into IPA or something.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#262

Post by binkHN »

tristor wrote: post #188

I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…

My Pixel phone has largely solved this for me. The built-in Call Screening is stellar and I don’t get bothered by robocalls much anymore because of how well the phone handles these.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#263

Post by Steltek »

arnaudsm wrote: post #23

My golden rules to make videoconferencing more reliable : - Use ethernet. Wi-Fi isn't reliable, your neighbor's microwave can ruin everything. - Use wired headphones. 0 latency. 0 connection time. And disables the mic noise-cancelling algos. - Use classic phone calls when required. It's more robust and latency is even better.

Wired headphones or nothing. I know they're connected because I can see them physically connected. They're charged because photons can move through wires. It's the right protocol because they fit in the device.

Apple gets props for making it break less often than everyone else but it's a fundamentally broken UI and broken protocol.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#264

Post by sib »

brk wrote: post #181

While most communications technology has improved over the last quarter century in terms of throughput, latency, cost, etc., voice calls have become horrid. Every aspect of telephone calls has become a total nightmare. Constant spam calls, poor audio quality, phones doing weird and random things in terms of answering calls and routing the audio to the proper device. It is strange how telco's have managed to absolutel…

Google is working on ‘clear calling’ for Android phone calls:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/9/23344147/android-phone-cal...

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#265

Post by BeetleB »

adriand wrote: post #228
tristor wrote: post #188

I have never had any of the issues described in this article and I've been using AirPods w/ an iPhone and a MacBook since AirPods came out. My issue with phone calls is 1. Robocalls 2. Robocalls 3. Robocalls 4. Robocalls 5. Robocalls I've been all over the world, and it is straight up fucked how bad this issue is in the US and it's not like this elsewhere. It's completely fixable, but American telcos make money off l…

> I have never had any of the issues described in this article Really? Because a telephone call is, by definition, between at least two people. And even if you have your shit sorted out, I find it surprising that every one of your contacts does too. Because although I, too, generally have the process down pat (it's true: it's crazy there needs to be a process around this now), a lot of the people I talk to sure don't…

Can echo GP. Simply have not had this been a problem for me. I call. Other party picks up. We start talking.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#266

Post by coldpie »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #252
coldpie wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not. It depends on who you and your circle of friends are, of course, but dating apps are definitely way higher usage than phone calls among anyone I know. I use my phone as a phone less than half a dozen times per year. If the phone functionality vanished, I don't think I would mind.

the disconnect is that you're not able to see outside your bubble. Your average iphone or android user is using the phone function far more than dating apps

How do we know who is in a bubble? :) When I walk around downtown, I see hundreds of people on their phones, and maybe one or two of them is actually using it as a phone. Obviously I don't know if they're on dating apps specifically, but they are enormously popular, so it seems plausible.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#267

Post by wruza »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #172

I expected this to be about the now common pattern of subjecting people to some shit version of Alexa for 10 minutes before you eventually crack and allow them to sit on hold for someone who might actually be able to solve their problem. Bonus shit biscuits if you allow them to get to some answer from Brenda (the brainless Alexa clone) where you basically say "great news, you can do this online". As if anyone with ha…

Don't tell her the truth, make her puzzled.

Few days ago I had to help my grandma with hiding some utility cables behind a cover on a new door. I decided that a guy from tv cable company would be the most experienced with this and called their support. Please describe your issue? TV has no signal (it has). Are you at home? Yes (no). Let me check it... hmm, it's okay on our side. Did you try to rescan channels? Yes (of course not). I'll transfer your call to an operator, please wait. Sure, was nice to meet you too, stupid bot.

Make sure that you "have" a direct service problem and it doesn't align with scripted or online solutions.

As if anyone with half a brain would have have been stupid enough to shout at their phone for 20 minutes trying to get your shitty arse robot to understand them if they could have gone online instead.

There are plenty of people who call-first, to be fair.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#268

Post by Decabytes »

I've experienced the issues with the weird connections issues, not being able to hear people etc, but the worst for me is when I call someplace and I have to suffer through the options spoken to me by a chat bot. Or worse it asks me to "say what I am calling about" in a few words, and it doesn't understand. Or I have to get through three different levels of menus before the option to speak to a representative comes up.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#269

Post by marcosdumay »

specialist wrote: post #140
dzink wrote: post #57

There needs to be a Big(O) table for UX. Number of user interactions and decisions to get to each functionality in each screen size. Then comes prioritization. You can only fit so many buttons and boxes close to the hottest zones of user interaction, especially on Mobile, and even less of them in advertising-powered products. When someone prioritizes the wrong use case on premium real estate and pushes back buttons t…

I haven't done user interface design, in anger, for 20+ years. Before the kids renamed it "UX" (old wine, new bottles). Anywho. We used to consider Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, and so forth. Celebrity UI designers (ahem) like Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini and Jakob Nielsen would belabor these seemingly obvious design considerations ad nauseum. Your Big-O suggestion could be a nice heuristic for scoring and ranking design alterna…

> Does anyone do usability testing any more?

My impression is that it's all quantitative post-fact A/B testing nowadays.

What is interesting, because it was widely known that quantitative usability research was mostly waste and you were much better doing 10 times the amount of it with only qualitative results.

What was not widely discussed¹ is that post-fact testing is also almost useless. It can only tell you what solution is better, but the real gain comes from discovering what problems exist.

1 - My guess it's because it is too obvious.

Re: The first minute of every phone call is torture now

#270

Post by vlunkr »

tristor wrote: post #238
vlunkr wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was terrible before, I'm not sure Covid could have made it any worse.

I don't know if it's directly due to Covid, as the grandparent asserts, but it's pretty indisputable that the quality of customer service has eroded across pretty much every industry sector, at least in the US. This could be due to companies generally being short-staffed, but it does seem like even when you interact with someone the intelligence level (or maybe more charitably, the experience level) of the people you…

Yeah I can see that. Calling big companies has been terrible forever, but customer service in physical stores has gone downhill. Mostly they all seem short-staffed. Seems like lots of stores let people go, and didn't replace them in favor of self-checkout systems.
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