I am having a pet peeve when it comes to automated phone services that don’t take their users into consideration. Today I experienced it once again. This time it was Comcast, but this is not something that only they do. A lot of companies do this. And it’s all bout the human interface design.
What happened when I called today (my connections just dropped) was that after I called the Comcast customer service number, 1-866-COMCAST, I was asked to enter my ten digit phone number, followed by a "1" for English. Once that had happened I was told that my call was being routed to the correct call center (or something along those lines). I then was asked to enter a "1" for English and then to enter my ten digit phone number. So after having entered the phone number twice, I still had to give them my name and address when I got through.
Now, my gripe is that if they use the first number only to get it to the right region, then they should either ask me to enter my area code and then just transfer me, alternatively get my area code from the incoming caller ID and ask me if that is the area I want to use. Alternatively, they should send my ten digit phone number and language preference as part of the transfer request, so that the receiving PBX knows who I am and can handle the call appropriately.