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How NOT To Design An IVR

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

While the humble interactive voice response (IVR) is a tried-and-true method of offering self-navigation and self-service to customers while at the same time shaving precious minutes off customer support calls, it's also one of most misused and abused technologies found in the call center.

While it's true that there are no bad IVRs, just bad IVR menu designers, there are far too many of the latter, hence the plethora of articles, blogs and rants written by telecom writers and editors. The latest comes from inContact's client services manager Nicole Burney, who relates some personal experiences with poorly designed IVR in a blog entry titled, “IVR Blunders That Make You Want To Scream, Part II.”

I'm not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse to be people like Nicole or me...people who understand how IVRs are supposed to work and how helpful and effective they can be when properly designed. Maybe ignorance is bliss when it comes to IVRs.

In any case, Nicole's ire was raised by an IVR that operated only via voice interaction, with no option to press keys. While an IVR supported by good speech recognition can be fabulous, one with less-than-robust speech technology behind it is a nightmare, particularly if you are calling from a noisy environment (a crowded train station, an airport, or a home with children in it). Without the ability to resort to touch-tone interaction, you'll often find yourself screaming uselessly into the phone, trying to trigger the action you want.

“While I was trying to navigate through the IVR menu, the speech recognition software was picking up on the background noise in my home, which in this particular case was Sesame Street’s beloved character Elmo counting to 5,” wrote Nicole. “The IVR speech recognition did not understand my selection (or maybe Elmo’s), so suddenly the lovely automated IVR attendant began speaking in Spanish, which was not my language of choice. So there I was, hoping that all my years studying Spanish at the University of Arizona paid off, only to be routed to a Spanish speaking operator after 5 minutes of IVR looping. As my luck would have it that day, I needed to be transferred to a different department. No bueno!”

Nicole, like many consumers, wonders about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of a company that decides to rely exclusively on immature and unaccommodating speech recognition software to route the calls. Given that Americans have a variety of accents, both regional and foreign, this seems to be about as unwise a choice as a company can make when it comes to IVR.

And there are no shortage of unwise decisions when it comes to IVR!