Certain technologies are only geared towards the dominant majority.

This man knew voice recognition did not work for his thick accent, so he let his bank representative know. But they still insisted that there is no way to go around it.

Read the full story below to find out how he dealt with it.

Voice recognition farce

I (M, too old to be bothered with being messed around) am a first-world immigrant to another first-world country and have an accent that voice recognition really struggles with.

All the local banks, including mine, have heavily pushed customers to use voice recognition. I call the bank about an issue, a very rare occurrence, as most of my banking needs are online, and they ask me to enroll in voice recognition.

When I stopped laughing, I politely told them that, due to my accent, it doesn’t work for me. Note that they had offshored their call centre service to the Philippines, so there is another communication issue, as my accent is very difficult for Filipinos, too.

I call again about a month later, and the bank informs me that voice recognition is now mandatory. I ask, “What if it doesn’t work?” Their response: “It always works.”

Cue my peals of laughter. I ask them how the enrolment works; they respond, “Just follow the instructions.”

“Still, what if it fails?”

“It won’t.”

This man tried several times to enroll in voice recognition.

The malicious compliance: the bank transferred me to the voice recognition enrollment, and it failed spectacularly. I had to hang up and call back.

I told them about the failure, but they insist on trying again. I complied, knowing it will fail again. Rinse and repeat. I called back and told them about the two failures.

They insist on trying AGAIN. My final compliance: it fails again, and I am about to have a sense-of-humour failure.

I call back again and insist on having my issue dealt with without going through voice recognition. Once again, they want me to follow their process.

So he finally asked for the manager, who was able to bypass it.

Cue a change in my tone of voice from friendly to authoritative (no raised volume, no shouting, just a change in tone).

“No, this has failed three times in a row. Look at your call records on this account. Either process my request, or I will escalate and put in a complaint.” (My wife had worked for them, and I knew that was a huge negative metric to be avoided at all costs.)

The Filipino call centre worker passes me to a native English-speaking supervisor, who also struggles with my accent. I am perfectly pleasant and explain the three failures, and that all I want is a simple action taken that can’t be done online.

Success! No complaint required.

Eighteen months later, I call again, and the bank has added an option to the IVR to bypass voice recognition. This change wasn’t down to me, but after speaking to friends who work at the bank, it was due to lots of complaints that it didn’t work for certain accents.

These call center employees need to learn how to listen.

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And more readers find the story relatable.

When humans have trouble with the accent, computers don’t stand a chance.

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