Putting The Caller First: Effective IVR Design for Your Call Center
by Michael Ahnemann, Principal Voice User-Interface Designer, Angel.com -
August 21, 2009
Putting The Caller First: Effective IVR Design for Your Call Center
By Michael Ahnemann, Principal Voice User-Interface Designer, Angel.com
“How can we design an IVR or call center application that our customers will actually use?”
Providers of speech-enabled IVR and call center systems are asked this question on a daily basis. From an IVR developer’s standpoint, nothing is more frustrating than encountering yet another boring, confusing, unintelligent IVR system. That’s because the technology exists – right now – to build IVR systems that are fast and easy to deploy and make the end user’s call experience accurate and enjoyable.
So why doesn’t this happen? In many companies, there are several stakeholders that influence the development of an IVR system. Call center managers obviously have strong input; they want an IVR system that automates as many functions as possible, resulting in dramatically less calls to live agents. On the other hand, your IT department will groan that an overly-complex IVR will be tough to program properly and even tougher to alter or upgrade. Sales and marketing teams want to interject brand messaging, C-level executives have their own ideas on what to include… the list keeps getting bigger.
Well-developed, intuitive, user-friendly systems may be the exception rather than the norm, but that doesn’t have to be the case for your company. Technology exists to build IVR systems that are fast and easy to deploy and make the end user’s call experience accurate and enjoyable. With that as your single guiding principle, here are four ways to create an IVR system that your customers will actually use:
1. Know Your Customers
One of the key complaints end users have of reaching automated systems is an abundance of confusing or irrelevant menu items that accompany even simple requests. Many of these extraneous options are the result of an incomplete knowledge of callers and the information they seek when they call your company.
A valuable IVR or call center provider can help you design a system based on what your callers actually seek to accomplish on the phone. Research should be conducted to determine what callers are requesting through your current system and with live agents, before you develop an IVR interface to handle those callers. Keep caller demographics in mind as well; younger users may be more likely to try a complex task with an automated system, while older callers may be more apt to “zero out” to a live agent at the first hint of confusion.
Once you have a clear picture of how callers use your phone system, you can identify common questions and requests for information that can be accommodated through your IVR system. After inputting minimal information, customers can get an individualized greeting and be routed to the correct representative if the automated system cannot address their concern.
2. Avoid Overstuffing
In the IVR world, we use the term “elegant” to describe how a well-engineered speech-enabled IVR system handles its tasks. It’s a simple rule of thumb: Any task that can’t be performed elegantly by an end user through the automated system should be directed to a live agent.
With the highly-advanced speech recognition and data management technologies employed in today’s IVR systems, it’s tempting for companies (and IVR providers) to try to automate as many tasks as possible. But overstuffed IVR systems are unwieldy to navigate and often wind up driving more traffic to live agents – the opposite of what they’re designed to do.
Once you’ve analyzed your current call center needs and created a wish list of features you’d like in your IVR system, sit down with your IVR provider to determine which tasks can be handled elegantly for end users through a speech-enabled system.
3. Involve Customer-Facing Employees
An automated IVR system is a major touch point for your company’s end users. It conveys as much about your brand image and selling proposition as any advertising and marketing campaign.
Rather than limit IVR design to business owners and executives, involve call center representatives and marketing managers. These customer-facing employees will lend invaluable insight into what your end users will find most helpful.
For example, to really demonstrate customer knowledge and make your IVR system a valuable resource, you can personalize caller interactions by integrating your IVR with customer databases. Today’s CRM tools exist solely to build connections between company and caller.
On-demand IVR solutions that integrate with CRM systems can personalize the caller experience by instantly recognizing the caller’s phone number and tailoring menu options based on additional customer data, such as purchase history or recent transactions.
So instead of hearing, “Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed,” callers may hear “Hello John! Would you like an update on your customer rewards program status?” Most callers will appreciate the individualized customer service.
4. Pay Attention to Every Detail
Even the most carefully-crafted, expertly-designed IVR system will fall flat if little annoyances impede the user experience. For example, consider carefully the persona with whom users will interact throughout a call. Your system’s persona should be easy to understand, consistent throughout the entire call and free of annoyances that turn users off, such as over-produced or phony-sounding voices.
Recovery strategies are another area that can make or break an IVR system. Keep in mind that, ideally, users will liken their IVR experience to having a conversation. When people don’t understand each other, they ask questions or rephrase statements to keep the conversation moving. Your IVR interface should employ similar conversational strategies to keep users confident and engaged when misunderstandings occur.
Follow these tips and you will be on your way to creating an IVR system that easily and elegantly addresses your callers’ needs while also providing the business value to keep your company’s C-level executives happy.
About Angel.com
Angel.com is a leading provider of on-demand call center and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions, which enable organizations to quickly deploy enterprise-level telephony applications. More than 1,600 customers turn to Angel.com's proprietary Voice Site technology to power customer service and marketing functions using intelligent speech recognition that can automate most phone-based interactions. Angel.com’s solutions are built on the Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and require no investment in hardware, software, or human resources, balancing the need for high quality communications with affordable pay-as-you-go pricing. For more information, visit http://www.angel.com.
|