Disecting an IVR Failure

Recently, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) announced that they would be opening a live call center to handle and address water supply shortages plaguing it's customers around the south Indian city.  The call center is set to replace an IVR system that was so woefully inadequate, approximately 80% of registered complaints were not being addressed.  Officials at the BWSSB blamed the failures on incorrect account numbers and incomplete customer address information left as voice messages on the system.  The call center will put customers in direct contact with human operators who will verify specific account and address information with customers so that their issues can be resolved in a timely fashion.

This situation seems to be a clear failure of the IVR system design and not of IVR technology.  The main purpose for the implementation of an IVR system is to save money by employing fewer live operators.  A secondary feature is to empower customers to access company services and complete simple transactions without the help of a human call center agent at any time of the day.  The system that the BWSSB employed failed to adequately accomplish customer self-service thus forcing the utility company to spend more money on a staffed call center.  By adopting a few simple design strategies, the BWSSB IVR system could have been a sufficient method for reporting water outages.

Many IVR systems employed by utility companies will request that customers enter an account number or telephone number associated with an account in order to access associated information such as a customer name and address.  A good system will ask customers to verify that it has accessed the correct information by prompting the customer to enter a PIN or some other form of identification.  Upon completion of the verification, the system can then proceed to record the customer complaint or issue.  The BWSSB system simply recorded customers speaking their account numbers or address so that a technician could then follow-up on the complaint.  The lack of real-time verification resulted in most complaints being left unaddressed.  The troubles were avoidable if a properly designed IVR had been utilized saving the BWSSB time and money.  Now they are forced to spend more of both at the added expense of customer satisfaction.