Brad Templeton of Brad Ideas has a suggestion for companies that offer an automated menu with speech recognition or touch-tone commands via a 1-800 number: offer a range of different 800 numbers that indicate you’ve been to the website, and can even potentially indicate what you have done on the website. As Brad says, many times the automated system will tell you to visit the company’s website, and this can be frustrating if you have already tried to solve the problem, or complete the transaction via the web, and just need to talk to a real person, and still have to navigate a maze of menu options etc. For example, a web page could say, “To amend this order in a way that can’t be done HERE, Call 1-800-xxx-yyy, press 3, wait for voice and enter your order number 123456 and then the pound sign.”

Click-to-call features also have much potential to improve the customer-experience: Switzerland-based SKY-click which launched a couple months ago offers companies a web-based call center solution for click to call features via Skype.

[UPDATE:  check out Bob Sutton’s post about trying to cancel an order with HP!]