A recent industry survey indicates that on average, North Americans calling into a customer service department will wait on hold for just 37 seconds before hanging up. This means that companies can’t miss any opportunity to connect with their callers, whether it’s a new customer or a loyal patron. With every hang-up, the company risks damaging customer loyalty and driving customers to their competitors.

 

The reasons callers get impatient and disconnect are many. One well-reported cause is having a frustrating experience — before they can even be put on hold — with an unhelpful, confusing interactive voice response (IVR) solution. Many legacy IVRs have an ill-designed voice user interface. Poor navigation, having to repeat information that has already been supplied, and the inability to get a live human when desired frustrates the caller decreasing their confidence in the company they are trying to contact, and causes them to hang up.

But, by taking time upfront to consider the following voice user interface design best-practice tips,it is possible to create a solution that stops frustrating customers and driving them to the competition. The goal is to design a contact center experience that will retain existing customers, help win new ones and keep competitors scrambling to keep up.

Self-service solutions improve satisfaction ratings by providing customers with instant access to information and services. When self-service solutions are used in conjunction with live agent services, they reduce wait times, help balance call loads and reserve agents for callers that need extra attention. Adding speech is a proven method for improving self-service solutions by heightening caller satisfaction, increasing automation rates and lowering overall call time.

 

The first step in designing a great voice user interface is conducting a complete review of business processes and customer interactions. You want to be sure that you are addressing as many customer requirements as possible. If you automate things that people don’t call about, it simply creates a delaying interface, which will be extremely frustrating. Once you have determined your overall service strategy, consider the following tips for creating a voice user interface (VUI) that will delight callers and maximize automation rates:

 

·        Speak in a common language — Your customers don’t always understand your jargon, including the names of products or services created by well-meaning marketing folks. Save the abbreviations, acronyms and nicknames for company memos and speak plainly to your customers.

·        Make it fast and easy — Don’t bombard your novice customers with too many options — you’ll just confuse them. Also, consider both novice and experienced users. This means you should enable “barge-in” capabilities and give your “power users” options for bypassing directions and prompts they don’t need.

·        Make it easy for callers to reach an agent — There is nothing more frustrating to a new or existing customer than spending time figuring out how to speak with a person. Add a “press zero at any time” option — it will lower call time and save you money in the long run. You can always add a friendly “What product are you interested in?” prompt to get them to the agent that can best assist.

·        Treat callers with respect — You’ll be amazed by the difference that a pleasant, trained voice and the occasional “please” and “thank you” will make in the caller’s willingness to use an automated system.

·        Use silence — Well-timed pauses help novice and experienced users navigate your system more effectively.

·        Make sure grammars carefully match prompts — To generate higher recognition levels and create a better customer experience, you should:

o       Provide for all reasonable caller utterances, however, the grammar should cover only the phrases you expect the caller to use.

o       Avoid multiple parses — words or phrases that match more than one rule.

o       Avoid large grammars that take too long for the speech engine to process. Extended pauses in the system’s operation will confuse callers.

·        Take errors seriously — Do not insult callers with “Invalid input” responses. That might make sense to your IT department, but it won’t to your customers. Be positive and say, “I’m sorry I didn’t understand that…” Leverage confidence and n-best match data to offer possible responses to increase recognition such as “Did you mean size 7?”

·        Extend your branding when choosing your solution’s “persona” — A fabulous experience with your speech-enabled self-service solution will re-enforce your brand and build customer loyalty. Select voice talent, or persona, that will project the image and style of your organization. Persona goes beyond the voice talent you choose and includes the tone of the prompts. Options to consider include male/female, old/young, and happy/serious. Also, do not mix voices as callers move from one application to another; carry one persona through the entire self-service experience.

·        Personalize the experience wherever possible — Dynamic scripting offers an opportunity to present self-service menus based on customer profile information. Carry personalization through to live agent interactions and eliminate the need for customers to repeat information.

·        Consider offering multiple languages — This will allow your system to serve your entire customer base.

·        Be prepared to continually tune your solution — even after production — to ensure the best results.  

 

Good user interface design needs to extend beyond automated services and should include ways to personalize the caller experience in all interactions. This means careful attention to how calls are sent to, and answered by, your agents.

 

First, it is very important for customer satisfaction — not to mention contact center productivity — to send callers to the right agent with correct skills to address their particular issue — the first time. Here your design must reflect the fact that inquiries from potential customers may need personal attention. Consider adding computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities to your solution to enable sophisticated call routing that finds the best possible agent to answer that call.

 

Getting the call to the right agent is just half of the battle. Providing agents with real-time customer data using a “screen pop” is also extremely important. No customer who has just spent time providing their information to a self-service solution is impressed by a company whose agents say “Hello, please tell me your account number.” Providing agents with caller information along with the call eliminates this frustration. Including historical information enables agents to immediately begin an intelligent conversation. Imagine the positive impact on your customers when the agent says “Hello, John, I see that you are interested in upgrading your mobile phone service. I can offer you special pricing for six months if you select our Gold Program.”

 

Contact centers using intelligent routing and CTI-enabled agent screen pops report faster call resolution rates, increased agent productivity, lower wait times and higher customer satisfaction rates.

 

One company putting these principles into practice is Green Mountain Energy Company, one of the nation's leading providers of cleaner electricity. They had an outdated IVR system that was difficult to use and drove customers to request agent assistance, even for routine transactions. Envox Worldwide replaced their system with a next-generation solution based on Envox 6, the company’s open, standards-based development platform. The Envox Professional Service Group designed a new speech-enabled voice user interface to provide Green Mountain customers with 24 hour access to Account Information and a Bill Pay service. The new solution has increased automation rates by 100% and enabled Green Mountain to automatically collect twice as many payments compared with their previous system. By decreasing the number of calls vying for agent assistance, Green Mountain is able to provide faster service to those customers that do require personal attention.

 

The goal of a well designed VUI is to quickly get people the information they need through automation AND to make sure that others, especially potential customers, are quickly sent to the exact person best qualified to assist. These tips, coupled with an understanding of customer needs will help you to create meaningful self-service solutions and design your contact center to minimize wait time and frustration levels. In the end, both you and your customers will benefit. Existing customers can get the information they need, when they need it. Potential customers will have a positive experience with your company from the start. And, your contact center will operate as productively as possible, enabling you to provide outstanding service while controlling costs.