If you made a Top 10 list of technologies customers hate the most, you might find programmable DVRs and cell phones somewhere in the list. But it’s nearly a sure thing that you’d find the interactive voice response (IVR) system near the top of the list. Customers have been complaining about the IVR since its introduction in the 1970s, and as technology has gotten more complex, so too have the complaints.
We know customers hate IVRs because of the proliferation of Web sites dedicated to trying to get around them. In the UK, there is PleasePress1.com, a Web site devoted to making it easier for consumers to navigate through IVR systems to get a human being on the phone. The Web site publishes an annual ranking called the “Phone Rage Index” which ranks the UK’s most frustrating automated phone menus. The second installation of the index has just been released, and it’s not great news for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customers (HMRC – Britian’s tax agency), Curry’s/PC World or BT (News - Alert), which take the first, second and third positions on the list.
The ranking, which uses data gathered by PleasePress1.com, was created to uncover the UK’s most ineffective customer service lines. The second annual installment of the list includes verbatim user feedback to help shoppers in the market for new services to make informed decisions.
So what makes a bad IVR? The Rage Index measures multiple factors, including the number of menu options, the levels within each menu and the length of introductions. It uses these characteristics to identify the 20 worst offenders, which are a mix of retailers, government agencies, insurance companies and service providers. Rounding out the top 10 are T-Mobile (News - Alert), the UK’s TV Licensing Agency, Sky, the Royal Mail, Ticketmaster, grocery store chain Asda and Virgin Holidays.
There was good news for Lloyds TSB, Halifax, Direct Line and Co-operative Insurance, all of which managed to drop off the Phone (News - Alert) Rage Index since last year, presumably by making improvements to their IVR systems.
The fault isn’t in the IVR technology itself, but in poor designs meant to keep customers away from live agents at any cost. If customers have to press too many choices, they will quickly try and “zero out” to a live agent. If they don’t find a solution quickly, they will also zero out. If they have to wait through too much pre-recorded self-promotion at the front end, they will quickly lose patience. Finally, if the IVR is using poor speech recognition technology that consistently produces false results or fails to understand the caller’s words, the customer will likely hang up and either never call again, or escalate the issue to more costly channels.
There is a right way and a wrong way to build menu trees in an IVR system. The right way includes limiting the number of branches on the menu tree, keeping unnecessary marketing talk to a minimum and ensuring that if customers cannot solve their own issues quickly through the IVR, that live agents are easy to find.
Your IVR is supposed to be a gateway to your company’s contact center, not a reinforced barrier. Keep in mind that it’s supposed to be a tool for customers, not a weapon to wield against them.
Edited by Blaise McNamee