We’re No Worse Than Anyone Else - the minimal approach

“Self-Service: Talking Your Language” in CRM Today has some useful words of advice. The author, Richard Brown, notes that in some cases companies are still adopting IVR (interactive voice response) solutions which save the business money but have little or no thought for customer service. It doesn’t need to be that way.

Surprisingly he spends most of the time talking about ways of making IVR systems work better, where such systems help callers to navigate through a set of menu choices. For example he notes:

The design thus needs careful thought, though some simple rules will help here, such as offering a sequence of no more than three sets of options, each containing a maximum of four choices.

Such systems are certainly better than many that are encountered at the moment. However this minimal approach will not put you ahead of the competition. The technology has advanced and interactive voice response (IVR) systems can indeed make you better than the competition. No greater cost is involved so this is very much a win/win situation.

Keeping Pesky Customers Happy

Many customer service call centers seem to encounter a large number of pesky customers. Unfortunately with many traditional IVR systems, perfectly reasonable callers can become pesky. Such callers often prefer to speak to human beings and have a low tolerance for anything that appears mechanical.

It appears that these pesky customers are often taking things into their own hands. As TechCrunch tells us, there is a new service, which they believe to be genuinely useful. It’s Bringo, the Phone Tree Killer. You’ll find it at the nophonetrees.com domain. It’s only available in the US at the moment but it helps users skip phone trees and connect with a real human on the customer support phone lines at many companies. That seems a little extreme but perhaps it reflects the standards of customer service that callers are encountering.

Bringo is not the only such service. There is also gethuman™. This movement has been created from the voices of millions of consumers who want to be treated with dignity when they contact a company for customer support. They’ve even published the gethuman standard v1.0 that suggests what standards customer service call centers should have in place.

The start of the standards will give you an idea of what is being suggested:

The gethuman standards have been designed with simplicity and directness as to eliminate ambiguity and enable testing and certification. There may be more than one way to accomplish each, but the result must be as follows:

1. The caller must always be able to dial 0 or to say “operator” to queue for a human.
2. An accurate estimated wait-time, based on call traffic statistics at the time of the call, should always be given when the caller arrives in the queue. A revised update should be provided periodically during hold time.
3. Callers should never be asked to repeat any information (name, full account number, description of issue, etc.) provided to a human or an automated system during a call.

There are 10 in all and overall they seem most reasonable.

Owners of call centers are probably looking at Bringo and the gethuman™ set of standards with dismay. How can callers be so unreasonable? Don’t they realize the cost of hiring human agents and training them? Surely they accept the compromise we have to make to balance service and cost. Well the answer seems to be that they don’t. Perhaps they’re clinging to that old-fashioned notion that “The customer is always right”.

Thankfully that isn’t the end of the story. If you plan the whole call center functioning around an IVR system, then the gethuman™ standards can be accepted as the basis of operations. With an IVR system, both the system and the caller have a shared goal. That is to achieve a solution to whatever the caller was calling about as quickly as possible. If that involves a human agent, then this should happen as quickly and as efficiently as possible. However with a good IVR system, this will probably be in only a minority of cases. The other good news is that this better system may well cost no more than installing inferior systems that callers try to get round.

Implementing IVR Projects the No Risk Way

Executive summary

• Do you want callers to be much more satisfied when calling your call center?
• Do you want to do that with lower costs than you incur at present?
• Are you hesitant to be one of the early adopters of the latest technology?

What is IVR?

IVR is used as an acronym for Interactive Voice Response where the caller keys in his responses on a touchtone telephone. Requiring customers to key in their responses is something that customers in general find less than satisfactory. However talking to a Crimsonet Natural Speech IVR (Interactive Voice Response) agent can be as pleasing as talking to a real person. An IVR system by Crimsonet can transform a call center by substituting IVR agents for some of the human call agents or for those outmoded touchtone Interactive Voice Response units.

For this article we will discuss an example of a call-center with a number of incoming lines. Suppose any incoming call might require any of a variety of functions to be handled. The first function might be as simple as greeting the caller and requiring some identifying information. For example this might include a credit card number. A more complex function might be giving a credit card balance on a credit card account. This type of call center is illustrated in the image below.

The long-term goal could be to maximize the use of IVR agents in the call center. IVR agents would be used for any function where they can perform better than a human receptionist. On the other hand, functions where the caller’s needs are difficult to detect or address would be left with a human agent This particularly applies to any function where the caller’s needs are complex, for example a request for technical service. So any call-center will typically have at least a few functions handled by human agents to cope with such callers, or as a backup to the IVR agents. The long-term arrangement of IVR agents and human agents in this example is illustrated in the image below.

I

Installing an IVR system by Crimsonet does not require a commitment to the full scope of the long-term solution. An IVR system can be implemented for a small section of the call center onlyand yet be fully effective. This concept of implementation by sections will be explored in this article.

What an IVR solution offers

IVR gives better caller service and lower costs

Installing an IVR solution within a call-center is easily accomplished and is relatively rapid. Such a project will give four main advantages. They are as follows:

• Complete divisibility
  By complete divisibility, we mean that any section, large or small, of the call-center activities can be easily hived off and handled by IVR agents. It is as easy as setting up a new group of human agents within the call-center. An important task is to ensure that the way in which calls are transferred to the section or are handed on from the section are well defined.
• Improved customer service
  IVR by Crimsonet offers improved customer service. The IVR agent is always alert, fully trained and very perceptive in interpreting customer requests. An IVR agent can provide the very best information and accurately transfer the call to another function if additional information is required.
• Performance measurement
  The accurate recording of both the callers’ requests and the IVR agents’ responses provide an excellent basis for measuring performance. The Crimsonet technology involves a continual monitoring of performance to facilitate a process of ongoing improvement.
• Reduced cost
  The running costs of operating an IVR system is much below that of employing human agents. The typical payback for an IVR project by Crimsonet is measured in months.

Defining an initial IVR section

An IVR section could involve Natural Speech IVR agents handling a particular function for a fraction of the incoming calls. In this example, suppose the caller must use a touchtone Interactive Voice Respon

se unit to identify that they wish to access the particular function. If a Natural Speech IVR agent is available, then a proportioin of such calls (for example 50%) are transferred to IVR agents. The balance of the calls for this function is handled by human agents. For example in one real life banking installation, the function involved in handling stock quotes inquiries was handled by an IVR section with great success.

By surveying customer reactions for those handled by IVR agents and those by human agents, a comparison of customer satisfaction can be developed. Clearly the costs of both methods are easily identified. This sectional approach is illustrated by the image below. In the case of the bank, the initial success has resulted in further functions that were transferred to new IVR sections.

Closing an IVR section - the costs

An IVR section test does not imply increased costs

Operating a Natural Speech IVR section as compared with managing the equivalent group of human agents or touchtone IVR delivers many advantages. It is therefore a very unlike event that an IVR section would be closed. The costs involved in running a Natural Speech IVR section for some time will usually be lower than the costs of managing an equivalent group of human agents or touchtone Interactive Voice Response units. This means that there is a net cost advantage when operating Natural Speech IVR. This means that there is little risk in setting up an IVR section in order to gain experience of this way of operating.

Conclusion

Natural Voice IVR Sections demonstrate the benefits while minimizing the risk

In practice it will be found that deciding to test out an IVR section is almost a no-brainer decision. Even in the worst situation where the IVR section is eventually closed, it is likely that minimal cash costs will have been involved. This risk can be minimized by choosing a smaller section. Much more likely however is that the benefits of the IVR approach will have been shown to be very significant. The operating experience with the IVR section will simplify the further installation of additional IVR sections.

More Human Agents May Not Be The Answer To Better Customer Service

People complain about telephone customer service almost as frequently as they do about the weather. Since that message “Your call is important to us” is often the prelude to an unsatisfactory experience, you could understand why Netflix decided to go the human agent route entirely. However a study released by callcentres.net suggests that even callers may think they got it wrong. callcentres.net is the central portal for the Australia and Asia Pacific contact centre industries providing research, benchmarking studies, and up-to-date news and information.

As the study points out, Netflix isn’t the only one Many contact centre managers misunderstand customer response to speech recognition applications. The study found 37% of contact centre managers without a speech application believe all customers would prefer to talk to a live agent to using a speech recognition self-service application.
A previous callcentres.net study that surveyed end users found that when customers have the choice to use a speech system or talk to a live agent, 30% of callers prefer the speech channel over an agent, with less than half of people preferring to talk to a customer service representative. If faced with waiting on hold prior to speaking to a customer service representative, this same study found 85% of customers would prefer to use a self-service speech recognition option.

“The research actually indicates speech recognition is the preferred self-service channel, both over the web as well as over a live agent amongst 30% of respondents.” So for a sizeable fraction of callers, you’ll show them “Your call is important to us” by offering them what they want, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) agent. If your system is functioning well, the others will probably enjoy their calling experience too.

Is your IVR system rude to your customers?

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems have been around for some years now. They are often implemented to minimize costs and to provide a more rapid pickup of calls, thus avoiding upsetting delays. Many such systems seem to have been adopted with the view that callers will accept a somewhat impersonal non-human voice if this means reduced delays.

This minimal get-by approach has unfortunate consequences. A recent Frost and Sullivan report spells out what can happen:

In the last decade, as part of the movement to reduce customer support costs, companies began to outsource their customer support centers...“However, the widespread adoption of IVRs has left customers frustrated and angry at what they perceive to be a callous disregard for customer service standards,” according to the analyst of the study. “One of the main reasons is the poor design of voice-based user interfaces that makes customers feel like the companies just do not care about them."

Rarely do companies do caller testing to determine user satisfaction. Just think of any recent experience you have had with an IVR system. Just imagine that a human call agent had spoken to you as that IVR system did. How would you rate the conversation on the rudeness <<< >>> politeness scale? Far too many are downright rude.

Some customers are so upset that they use a service such as that described by Brian Troy in his post, How much do your customers hate your IVR? He tells us that entire companies are being launched to aid customers in getting around the system. BRINGO! is a new service, which enables customers to get to a human faster. BRINGO! has conquered phone trees. That seems a somewhat extreme but perhaps understandable reaction.

Such rudeness was never really acceptable. Now it is just bad business for two reasons. Firstly customers are aware that the control has passed to them as the Internet gives greater information and opportunities.

It is also bad business to stay with that old-fashioned rude IVR system for competitive reasons. Natural voice technology has evolved to the point where highly effective Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems can be implemented. This is an important competitive advantage to the early adopters of such systems.

Can You Hear The Future?

Rhetorical questions do not require answers. The answer is always very clear. Such questions are becoming very commonplace around the subject of speech technology or voice recognition. That’s because such technology will play an increasingly large role in all our lives in the future.

For example, Victor Keegan, in the Guardian asked Has voice recognition finally come of age? He based his positive view on relatively simple examples involving voice technology for note taking. As he said results can be impressive. Indeed this blog post is written with Nuance NaturallySpeaking software and there is rarely need to correct the text produced from my dictation

Michael Sola, Director of IT at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, wrote in a somewhat similar vein Can you hear me . . . again? He is pointing out that the world is going increasingly mobile. Different people want to handle their messages in different ways. A good proportion would certainly prefer to see them written out. So a speech technology service is inevitable.

Why is this groundswell of opinion on the inevitability of speech technology so strong? The more perceptive observers might point to the considerable efforts that Google seems to be putting into this area. That may well be justification enough for a bullish view. However the underlying reasons are much more straightforward.

David Mould, a Telco Consultant living and working in Thailand, has a keen interest in these emerging technologies. He lays out these reasons in a recent post on Ingredients for a good voice based service for cell phones. Here is what he says on this:

The impact then will be in services that are one or more of:

• key intensive
• time intensive

Key intensive activities are those that require many keystrokes, e.g. navigating IVR or text messages. Many handsets today (the Nokia E50 for one) have message readers that provide alternative methods for reading received SMS’s. With the growing restrictions on use of mobile devices whilst driving, a service that allows you to dictate and send an SMS through a voice interface, as opposed to keyboard strokes, could prove to be very popular and useful.
…..
(A key) service, available from other providers such as Jingle Networks (1-800-FREE411), is directory services. You can use the voice interface to search for services and typically will be connected automatically.

A directory search would normally be a time intensive and/or key intensive activity. By creating an access channel via voice, this turns the interaction more into a conversation or discussion. This has the benefit of creating appeal in less technically able groups who look for a more familiar access path.

Key intensive or Time intensive applications are likely to be those most people like to avoid. Any such application based on speech technology with good functionality is likely to see a ready and rapidly expanding market.

Overall if you do not hear the future, perhaps you’re just missing out on the buzz that is all around you.

When is an IVR system satisfactory?

Any company or service that must handle a large number of callers will inevitably install an IVR system. What factors does the owner of such a system consider in deciding whether performance is satisfactory? Here are some of the important ones:

• the cost of running the system
• the number of calls the system handles
• the proportion of calls that must be handled by a human operator
• the number of complaints about the system

Unfortunately the general level of satisfaction with IVR systems is low, so people may not complain even if they’re not completely satisfied. That’s why some IVR system owners adopt some of the ruses mentioned by Carl Turner in his recent article Tricking the caller to stay in the IVR. Here is a sample of what he is discussing:

I don’t think I’ve worked on an IVR project when the business people didn’t suggest using “tricks” to keep callers in the system. You know what I mean by tricks: disabling the zero key, or playing a routing menu when zero is pressed, or using a non-zero key for transfers, messages that falsely state long queue times, or putting the caller back in the system after they request a transfer. Often the tricks that are used in IVRs can create pure misery for the caller.

It’s all very well to try to reduce the cost of the operation but that’s not the whole picture. Callers are often customers. Without them the business is nothing. So when is an IVR system satisfactory. The only sensible answer must be when callers find it satisfactory. That’s why Carl Turner offers the following advice:

My recommendation to companies considering using tricks to keep customers in the automation: work on the quality of your IVR first. Monitor, survey, read the reports, improve. Once you’re satisfied that the IVR operates flawlessly you can consider using some small inducements (a nice way of saying a subtle trick) to keep callers in the IVR. If it’s done properly you might be able to increase your automation rate slightly with no cost to the user experience. However, it all depends on first getting the IVR right.

Business owners should not find this thinking difficult to accept. Customers are much more in control in this Internet age. It is very much easier for them to check out the competition and switch if they’re not completely happy. That’s why it’s essential to be customer-centric. You’ve got to see it from the customer’s point of view. So once more, what is the only possible answer to that question, “When is an IVR system satisfactory?” It’s when the customer tells you it’s satisfactory.

Related:
It’s True: Your Customer Can Love Your IVR (or at least be good friends)