Calling phone support is tricky; the choices aren't always clear, there's no room for errors and on top of that there are no back buttons forcing you to hang up if you made a mistake. In addition the often long waiting times causes users to be more frustrated which goes out over the employee answering in the other end.
There was a standardized system for interacting with the automated phone service.
The experience was more user friendly for both the caller and the employee answering in the other end.
Concept development isn't always about making huge breakthrough solutions, sometimes it's about making the little things work seamlessly. I believe that by adding simple functionality to the system we can greatly enhance the user experience.
It starts by establishing a common use for the button half of the buttons: 7 takes you back one step, 8 switched to English and back, 9 waiting in line makes the system call you up once it's your turns and finally 0 allows you to start over. This gives the user all the control they need while still giving 6 numbers for options.
The second step is to allow the person answering to see just how long a customer has waited. This way they can be sensitive to customers who've waited for a very long time and customers get more frustrated the longer they've waited.
Finally it's incredibly important to let the user know their place in line. Rather than providing a time which is difficult to get accurate, by letting the user know what place in line they have they can approximate the waiting time based on amount and how quickly they move forward.