I got a phone call last week from Gilad Odinak over at Spoken Communications, in response to the blog post I wrote about the guided IVR used by Spiegel Brands and powered by Spoken. My gripe was that, when I called Spiegel to check out the IVR, all I got was a DTMF interface. Boo! I wanted to experience some guided self-service with natural language, but came up short.

Gilad told me that, at times, the Spiegel contact center and its hardware can get a bit funky — blame the network and the equipment. He said that I should try calling again, when the system wasn’t all wonky. Well, I did today and am happy to say I got to chat with “Lindsay,” the virtual agent who guided me through a few ridiculous requests I made. Here’s a transcript: (more…)