As more phone work is outsourced, businesses want their paid talkers to be as non-emotional and predictable as machines. They call it "conducting standardized conversations," and a new book coming out in May teaches phone workers the psychology behind containing emotion and turning every phone call into a series of canned Q&A encounters. From techie publisher Wiley, the book is aimed mostly at phone survey conductors (though it also applies to any phone worker) called The Telephone Interviewer's Handbook: How to Conduct Standardized Conversations. There is a whole chapter devoted to "controlling your voice" and one on "refusals" as well as "probing." I really want to read the chapter called (scintillatingly) "unusual circumstances while conducting interviews." Is that where they tell you how to deal with a cranky old lady who yells "SCREW YOU!" and hangs up?
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense that as natural language processing software gets better at dealing with the way humans talk, humans would also get better at talking in ways that emulate computers. Plus, it's a good way to help non-native speakers hold successful conversations in English about technical topics. Soon there will be no way to tell if you're talking to a person or a voice-activated menu.
