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.

IVR Design Tips

Most negative customer experience issues related to IVR systems are due to poor system design.  Despite multitudes of customer feedback data and industry best practices, many IVR systems lack basic design features that would make them more acceptable to customers.  The principles behind a good design are rather simple however a designer can often make what seems like a straightforward navigation menu to other designers, but is overly complex or daunting for the average consumer.  To this end, Acclaim Telecom Services recently released a list of common sense IVR design tips.

Like many lists of design tips that have come before, Acclaim recommends that first and foremost, the navigation menu should remain simple and concise.  Many systems try to offer too many options potentially resulting in customers forgetting choices and having to re-listen to a particular menu.  Another very important design tip is to only ask customers to enter information once.  Any duplicate request for information is indicative of an inefficient system and can cause frustration among customers.  Perhaps the most important tip is to make it easy for a user to exit the automated system and speak to a live operator.  Too many systems either bury the live operator option deep within the menu choices or worse, don't even give the customer the opportunity to speak to a human being.  On one hand, this is an excellent money saving strategy, but on the other, it is terribly alienating for a frustrated customer.  These tips are very simple however they are so often missing from the most basic IVR system.  Simply adjusting the design mindset can help drastically improve customer experience and satisfaction with an IVR system.

Empathetic IVR

Although numerous studies have indicated that customers have become more accepting of IVR systems, there are still instances that can cause frustration, especially systems that employ sub-par voice recognition software.  Frustrated and angry users will tend to emote their feelings in their speaking voice causing an already poor voice recognition system to have more trouble understanding the customer.  This leads to a vicious cycle in which the user tends to become more frustrated while the IVR system becomes less likely to recognize menu choices and/or voice commands.  Ultimately this can lead to a very negative customer experience which can effect a company's bottom line.

Yang Liu, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas, is conducting research that could change the face of voice recognition software as we know it.  She and her graduate students have received a three-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to investigate emotion recognition and modeling in speech processing.  Liu's research will focus on voice pitch, intonation patterns and word choice and their associations with a variety of emotions such as anger, sadness, happiness, surprise and frustration.  If successful, her research could be applied to many applications including IVR systems that could quickly recognize a frustrated user and immediately transfer him or her to a human operator.  This would lead to a better overall customer experience and likely improve customer retention.

Improving IVR Through Analytics

Customer feedback is certainly the most useful data in determining where process improvement can be made in any system including IVR.  Customer surveys are a good method for data collection, however since such data is merely a snapshot of customer experience they can be deceiving.  In addition, customer surveys are completed on a voluntary basis potentially skewing the data towards users who are biased against using an IVR system.  The bottom line is that in today's fast paced world, most people have very little time or motivation to complete a brief customer experience survey for the many IVR systems they encounter on a daily basis.  Angel.com has recently released the Caller First Analytics service which is designed to gather more specific data about customer experience in the background during customer interactions.

The Caller First Analytics software gathers data about call volumes, voice interactions and most importantly, specific IVR pathways that lead users to dial out to a live operator.  Visual reports can be generated that display graphical illustrations of various call center metrics.  More importantly, the software can also show pathways that customers have taken through the IVR system and where they broke off the path.  Knowledge of this kind of information is key to analyzing potential issues with trouble areas along the pathway and how the system can be improved to prevent such break-offs from occurring.  Break-offs result in higher call volumes for live operators in a call center thus costing a company more money for customer service.  Rapid identification of trouble areas could potentially result in large savings when appropriate improvements are implemented.  Applications like Caller First Analytics could be an excellent tool for analyzing customer data and suggesting improvements for IVR systems.

Smart Grid IVR

In a world where population and resource demands are rising, utilities providers are experimenting with new technologies to help reduce energy usage and costs for consumers.  One such method in development is the smart grid.  The smart grid creates a method of remote monitoring and control of utilities allowing usage of high energy consuming devices to occur when utility prices are at their lowest rates during a given day.  Likewise, it would remotely turn off selected appliances at peak times to reduce energy demands and save the consumer money.  As smart grid systems are tested and implemented, there will be an unavoidable increase in the communication between consumers and utility companies.  IVR is poised to be the primary tool for such communications.

Jon Arnold of Intelligent Communications Partners recently wrote about Nuance Communications' efforts to deal with what will undoubtedly be an influx of inquiries by consumers.  Of course utilities have relied on IVR in their call centers as a means to reduce the load on human operators.  However, changes to utility grids will, at least initially, elicit more calls and issues from consumers.  Nuance has been hard at work on an outbound IVR service called Proactive Notifications designed to inform customers about the many topics related to the smart grid.  For example, informational alerts would be sent explaining downtime for certain appliances during peak energy periods.  However, there is a fine line between too little and too much information.  As a result, much work is being put into determining what and how much consumers will want to know about the smart grid.  This way, inbound calls will not increase so much that the call center is unable to handle the influx.  Implementation of smart grids are in early development stages in most parts of the world, but as they become more of a reality, IVR will surely play a significant role.

Golden Rules of Self-Service

There is, and perhaps always will be, an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of customer self-service through IVR systems.  A simple web search will return countless anecdotal accounts of frustration and trouble with IVR self-service solutions.  However, most consumer research indicates the opposite.  In addition, customer satisfaction data collected by companies further indicate a general acceptance of the technology by a majority of consumers.  These results raise the question: what is it about IVR systems that elicit such varied user perceptions?

ClickFox recently conducted a survey asking participants about their preferred method of interactions with their banks, cable/wireless providers, utilities and insurance providers.  The results indicate that most customers prefer to use self-service to resolve simple tasks like paying bills or checking account status, but would rather human interaction for more complex tasks such as filing claims or seeking technical assistance.  Of course these results also show that there will always be a place for human customer service operators but there is room to increase self-service and customer satisfaction at the same time. To implement an effective system, developers must take consumer demographics into account and consider how their range of customers will respond to certain types of self-service interactions.  By avoiding common mistakes in development, companies can also avoid negative attention on the web and social media sites.  1to1 Media suggests that there are five golden rules that will help increase self-service interactions while concurrently improving customer satisfaction.  Using best practices, knowledge bases and end-user analysis in IVR development can result in cost-savings and customer retention.

IVR Year in Review

Historians will remember 2009 for many different reasons although chief among them will likely be the worldwide economic downturn and its effects on business. The IVR industry suffered as much as any, but there were several bright spots throughout the year. Despite some people writing off IVR systems as a mature product on the decline, there were several innovative uses of the technology that will almost certainly sustain it for years to come. Some novel uses include business continuity management systems created and implemented for the H1N1 pandemic (1, 2, 3) and other unforseen catastrophes. There were also many novel implementations of IVR in health care management and delivery including virtual medical clinics, out-patient monitoring and followup/medication reminder services. In addition, academic researchers found potential benefits from the use of IVR by making it easier for test subjects to submit real-time data via mobile phones while outside of the laboratory environment.

Despite the advances and new uses of the technology and potential for future growth in more traditional applications, there are still many common mistakes being made during the design and implementation that need to be addressed in order for companies to fully capitalize on the power of IVR. Several individuals and companies in and outside of the industry have complied very good lists of common problems and other considerations that should be made before rolling out an IVR system (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). By creating lists of best practices and learning from internal mistakes and customer feedback, IVR has potential uses for many years to come. It appears that 2010 will continue to be a difficult time for many companies, but those that work to improve their products and exceed customer expectations should weather the storm and flourish when the economic recovery begins in earnest.

Over the course of the year, this blog has been a work in progress and we want to thank everyone for spending a few minutes reading our posts each week. Please feel free to discuss any of our past or future articles in the comments section. Together we can make this blog and others like it forums for progress and improvement in the IVR industry. All of us at Universal Digital Productions would like to wish everyone a safe, happy and prosperous new year. See you in 2010!

IVR Overdose

In light of the current economic situation, companies are learning how to do more with less in order to survive. This impacts customer service as much, if not more than other segments of a business. Even before economics pushed companies to cut costs, many businesses began utilizing IVR systems as a way to reduce overhead and ask their customers to handle common issues through a self-service solution. Although some research indicates that consumers have accepted telephone-based self-service, there is also resentment when companies put additional burdens on their IVR systems and force customers to resolve more complex issues with little help from live operators.

Research from 2007 indicates that 91 percent of American consumers already feel that companies expect customers to handle too much on their own with IVR systems. This has a directly negative impact on customer satisfaction and drives consumers away. However, the same research indicates that consumers are willing to utilize other technologies for self-service such as web-based or text message-based systems. It is important for businesses to consider the the complexity of the self-service solution before deciding to implement it on a specific platform.

The ability for a customer to see a list of options increases the ease of navigating a complex self-service menu. This can be achieved more easily in a web-based or visual IVR environment than in a standard IVR system. Similarly, the option to speak to a live operator should not be perceived by a company as a last resort for helping a customer. Some people want to use self-service, while others will always desire help from a human being. It is important to design IVR systems to take that fact into account as most callers are very frustrated when they finally reach the elusive operator. As the economy improves, certain cost control measures will likely remain in place as a means of improving profits. It is of the utmost importance for companies to maintain useful but not overwhelming IVR customer self-service systems.

Customer Retention and IVR

Despite the many improvements of IVR systems since their inception, they still score poorly on customer surveys. This is once again evident in a UK consumer survey conducted by Greenfield Online. The survey reports that 41% of users find voice self-service to be the "most annoying" customer service tool when compared with paper communications, email, text messages and live call center agents. Furthermore, only 1% of consumers have a positive impression of the technology. A main point of contention is the lack of integration between voice self-service and operator assisted service. This most likely refers to situations where customers are asked to repeat information to a live agent that they have already reported to an IVR system earlier in their call. The end result is that customers are left feeling less like an individual and valuable asset to the business and more like one of many identical clients.

Some would suggest that these results are an indication that IVR simply does not work and should be replaced by live customer service agents. However, this assertion assumes that live service agents are better equipped to handle the burden of customer support than an automated system or combination of the two. The fact is that while a human agent may be able to recognize speech better than a voice self-service system, the cost of doing business in such a way is unsustainable. It would be unprofitable for most companies to respond to every customer service issue with a live agent. The increased manpower requirement would likely lead to outsourcing to a foreign call center which introduces another set of customer satisfaction issues. Furthermore, call center agents would simply be overwhelmed by the volume of inbound customer service calls.

UK consumer data suggests that 73% of customers end a relationship with a business due to poor customer service and this costs the business £248 (approximately $400) per year. From this information, it is clear that there is a fine balancing act between running a cost effective business and maintaining customer satisfaction. It would appear that one of the best ways to retain customers while still employing an IVR system is to address the issue of perception. A customer wants to feel that his business is just as important as anyone else's and this can be achieved by creating a personalized voice self-service experience. There are redesign and implementation costs, but the long-term dividends gained by having satisfied customers can far exceed the short-term monetary investment.