Tag Archives: speech-recognition

4 Instances Where Your Customer Will Skip the IVR

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4 Instances Where Your Customer Will Skip the IVRThe IVR (Interactive Voice Response) has been the bane of many customers’ existence since its inception. Unfortunately, this seemingly helpful tool has become somewhat of a nuisance for callers. From convoluted dialing options to poor speech recognition, it’s no wonder that customers are skipping this friendly voice over and trying to reach a live agent. According to JD Power & Associates, the IVR accounts for an astounding 27% of the total call experience. However, only 7% of organizations currently offer an IVR solution that delivers a better experience (CSAT) than their live agent experience.

So, where is your IVR failing customers? We explore four popular pain points that many IVR systems need to improve upon:

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SIP is Seeping Into Call Centers – and Making an Impact

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According to Contact Babel‘s 2011 US Decision Maker’s Guide, a majority of call center operations are fully or partially IP-enabled. Over the last few years, that has allowed SIP adoption to reach a tipping point.

For most organizations, SIP comes along by default with a call center upgrade (like moving up to Avaya Aura). For others, SIP is part of a telecom cost reduction strategy. Regardless of how it got through the door, SIP has the power to do much more than just be a part of the unseen plumbing.

A SIP-enabled call center can:

  1. Add 3rd Party Enhancements (like speech analytics)
  2. Call-attach data (that actually works)
  3. Advance Visual IVR interfaces for web and mobile

While these enhancements are possible without SIP, SIP makes deployment much easier. I’ve elaborated below on how these benefit the call center operation.

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Misnavigation not solved by speech-driven menus

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Speech recognition can be awesome

Speech recognition is a technology that can do amazing things. For example, you can watch an Android app translate from one language to another in real time here.

… or silly

Unfortunately, its use in phone menus is not quite as stellar. In fact, it some cases it seems counter-productive.  For example, when you replace “press 1 for billing” with “for billing say ‘billing’.” It’s almost comical.

Give us some credit, please

Another example: The system that tries to seem advanced by claiming it can digest regular English: “Tell me what you want to do.” This is usually followed by “you can say ‘billing’ or ‘technical support’”. Let’s give callers some credit: they know that there are only a few different types of agents at the call center, so there are really only a few choices to make. There is no point in getting chatty with the auto-attendant.

Are you really decreasing the burden on the caller by replacing “press 1 for billing” with “tell me what you want to do?”. In the latter case, the caller now has to think about what kind of phrase the system might be expecting.

Misnavigation pains continue

For these reasons, we have found – anecdotally, at least – that speech-driven menus fare no better at reducing misnavigation compared to tone-based menus. Although there are cases where speech recognition really shines (directory assistance is a great example), the basic call-routing role is not one of them.

It’s not a rare day that I hear someone walking in the street on the phone with customer service … screaming into their phone: ‘AGENT, AGENT, AGENT!’ … it’s an automated attendant at the other end of the line … [which] we have come to begrudgingly accept as a fact of life.

– Blake Landau, editor of CustomerManagementIQ

Speech-recognition is not making phone menus any better

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The use of speech recognition in phone menus is one of those advances in technology that sounds great in theory, but doesn’t live up to the promise in the real world. (Maybe it’s because it works so well in the movies!)

There are certainly use cases where  speech recognition is the absolute best approach. Directory assistance is a great example. But, sadly, a far more common implementation involves replacing “press 1 for billing” with “for billing say ‘billing’.” This kind of borderline-comical situation is what leads to so much user dissatisfaction with the technology.

Blogger Blake Landau summed up nicely in a recent post on the CustomerManagementIQ blog:

It’s not a rare day that I hear someone walking in the street on the phone with customer service… screaming into their phone: ‘AGENT, AGENT,AGENT!’ Fortunately the recipient of this anger is not getting their feelings hurt… it’s an automated attendant at the other end of the line. … as consumers, we come to begrudgingly accept these as a fact of life.

CMIQ calls Fonolo’s approach “Nirvana”

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Customer Management IQ, one of the leading publications covering the call center and customer service space covered Fonolo in a recent article.

Senior editor Blake Landau wrote:

The paradigm here is that callers, like visitors to a standard or mobile web page, get to click or tap on the box that best represents what they need. From there, the Fonolo application connects them directly to the agent that can best serve them. Callers get directed to the right agent on a first try, instead of ‘mis-directing’—but no longer interface with the plague of DTMF or speech driven menus. Nirvana!

The problem of “mis-directing” or, as we call it, “misnavigating”, is more than just an annoyance to callers, it can also add considerable cost to the call center operation. When a call is connected to the wrong agent, time is wasted while the agent: assesses the caller’s needs, concludes that an internal transfer is needed, explains that to the caller, makes the transfer, then logs the call or does other wrap-up work before rejoining the queue.

Landau discussed Fonolo’s approach to turning the phone menu into a visual interface and described it as a “more natural way” to navigate.  We certainly agree. It is hard to overstate just how much people dislike traditional phone menus. Whether they are speech-driven or tone-driven, they do a poor job of getting callers to the right agent while usually increasing the caller frustration.

Landau concludes:

[Fonolo’s] mission is not to dismiss or replace the IVR, but rather to make it work better by inserting more intuitive interfaces between the call center and the customer to better both sides of every manager’s equation—customer experience and cost control.