The segment, titled "Fake Voices are Big Business," had all the signs of story edited down so much that it lost its meaning. On the one hand, it's interesting to hear that Amtrak's automated operator "Julie" has a 90% approval rating from callers, but when you follow that tidbit with a sequence from the widely publicized web video of a cable installer falling asleep on a customer's couch waiting on hold with his company's call center, you've changed the subject from IVRs to hold times.

The thread is totally lost when Paul English comes on with an empty quote: "I call it a customer death spiral." Instead of explaining that English has united with Microsoft and Nuance to create a set of industry standards to solve the precise problems that English became famous complaining about, the CBS report cuts to Paul Payton, a man who records his voice for IVRs.

Poor Paul Payton -- he ends up looking like a bad guy, apologizing for what looks like an industry that cares little for its constituency: "I'm providing a service," Payton says.

CBS framed the story as an "inside the lion's den" tale with regard to SpeechTek. I think they did it a disservice. In spite of all the headlines to the contrary, the speech industry has done wonders for self-service.

As any consultant (or speech IVR vendor worth his or her salt) will tell you, IVRs are best used to handle the easy stuff -- questions like 'what's my balance?' 'where's your nearest store?' and 'is my flight on time?' -- not customer service issues.

The loudest complaints come when businesses use the IVR to delay or keep their callers away from agents. But you probably know that it. It's CBS and its poorly informed viewers that don't.