Mark Gibbs over at Network World has put together a spiffy little scoring system for customer service systems (including many criteria for IVR systems). How would callers score your IVR using Mark's guidelines? Place a call and find out, you may be surprised.

Even if you are still in the development stages, it's worth a read; many of his observations are a quick-n-dirty VUI design lesson. However, I don't necessarily agree with all of his criteria, such as "Subtract one point if there is music on hold" and "Add one point if a human answers". Different callers will value these things in different ways, and an IVR that your customers enjoy using may be more welcome than a live agent.

Here are some highlights:

Subtract three points if the person or IVR tells you that you have to call another number for the service you want. Subtract 1,000 points if the other number is wrong, busy or discontinued.

...subtract three points if you have to listen to a long menu of choices and the IVR won't let you enter your selection until it finishes. Subtract 10 points if the choice you're looking for and what you are offered are completely different.

Subtract 10 points if the first person you speak to does not have [your call] details, and if you get transferred, subtract 10 points for each subsequent person without your details.

Posted by Vance at 05:52 PM | Permalink

Earlier today, as I was typing a comment in our internal issuing-tracking system, I hit backspace to correct a typo. WHAM! I go back to the previous page, and my long-winded comment is gone. Apparently I somehow left the context of the text area (did I tab, or spuriously click, or??), which causes backspace to act as a hotkey for "Back". The web browser was not very forgiving of my mistake.

Are your IVR applications forgiving? They should be.

I can think of one great example. When I call my cell phone provider's voicemail system, and I delete a message, I am immediately given the option "To undelete this message, press 1." If I am checking my voicemails on the go and accidentally hit the 7 key (delete) instead of what I meant to do, this is a lifesaver!

I can also think of many calls (I won't name companies) where I've ended up in some part of the app where I was destined to hear a message and be disconnected. What if I got there by mistake? What if I would prefer to leave a message? Forgive me for not using the app in the way you had forecasted. If I feel that it's impossible to make mistakes while in your app, I probably won't mind using it again.

Posted by Vance at 10:21 AM | Permalink

First, read this woman's story of a customer service nightmare she encountered when her stock trading company was bought out. When the new company's website wouldn't let her login, she turned to their main phone number (an IVR). But the system failed, and it failed miserably.

Ask yourself, as a VUI designer, what could have been done better in this company's IVR, to ensure that customers like her receive quality service?

Continue reading to see some of my suggestions.

Continue reading "What would you do differently?" »

Posted by Vance at 03:41 PM | Permalink