Was tickled to read your opening rant, Rands, as I'm an engineer-turned-marketer in the speech recognition industry. Haven't seen your earlier (no doubt justified) skepticism on speech. It's going the way of ATM's and airport check-in kiosks. Before: OOH SCARY GIVE ME A HUMAN. After: PEOPLE ARE STUPID SELF-SERVICE IS FASTER. Outsourcing experiences like yours with "Joe" only prove the case that easy questions should go to automated systems and tough questions should go to intelligent skilled reps. And the sooner companies make automated systems stop sucking (speech is one way, though not the only one), the better. Anyways. Not meant to be a commercial. Just was nice to see validation from a favorite blogger.