Recently I met a client who was in a hurry to get an IVR Software developed for his business. But while discussing specification of his IVR Software, he was very keen on documenting and finalising the IVRS call flow as he thought it will waste precious time and will delay the IVRS development, but I insisted that, before actually starting coding IVR software, we must completely document the whole call flow. I had to cajole him, explain him why call flow is required and a must for any customised IVR software! Finally he agreed and gave us few days for documenting call flow in tight schedule of his IVR development.

When we submitted him our first draft along with our suggested improvement in call flow as per usability point of view, he told us,” thank you Uttam for insisting on call flow, now I can see why you insisted in preparing the call flow before actually do the development. I totally agree with the changes in the call flow and most probably, I would have asked you to make the changes after I would have checked by dialing to the IVR.”

While I was happy to hear those nice words, I thought I should try to write benefits of IVR call flow. They are:

1. While IVRS is sequentially processed, if call flow is available, required option can be spotted quickly in IVR call flow. Caller or user does not have to listen out whole list of options to know which option he has to choose for his required information. This is particularly helpful for new caller.

2. To examine usability of IVRS, call flow is the document to consult! With call flow, one will know if the options are read out properly, and how they are presented to caller. One can check without actually calling to the IVR.

3. With the help of call flow, scripting of prompts to be used in the IVR System become much easier and it will improve IVR usability.

4. A call flow will help database design required for IVRS.

5. It is easy to make changes in call flow, but changing actual flow in IVRS may require changes not only in coding, but also in scripts, prompts audio files. It is time consuming, more work for developer as well as script writers as well as voice artist.

6. Call flow will help identifying and setting up milestones in IVR software development. It will reduce many avoidable alterations, changes after coding.

There will be other benefits too which most probably I am unable to recollect at this point of time, but I will update this post as soon as I recollect them.

Yes, it is true. Many people do not like using IVRS! But it is nothing to with IVR as a technology, but poorly designed IVRS. There are few websites who list top 100 worst IVRS! Also website about  IVR cheat code to speak to human agent in shortest way possible.

These sites have been real eye opener to me and I think they clearly make IVRS developers, consultant work harder to make use of IVR more user friendly. IVRS usability is as important as the IVRS itself!

That is the irony! Many people look for just the technological aspects of an IVRS, specially the developers like me! I too get excited about the jargon, SS7, ISDN, Call Handling, CDR etc. while enough importance is not given designing of menus, call flow and day to day monitoring of successful IVR usage.

No doubt, the technological aspect is important to keep the IVRS running 24 hours a day, at the end of the day, if the caller does not find the IVRS to use and get his desired information, the very purpose of installing an IVRS is defeated!

Here is the link to a youtube video about IVRS.

The website to visit to know 100 worst IVR : http://www.touchtonehell.com/

IVRS is supposed to be force multiplier in the filed of customer service in a call center. But is your IVRS increasing customer satisfaction or has become an irritant to your caller ? Here are five Tips to make your IVRS a force multiplier in your call center.

1. CRM Integration

You must integrate your CRM with IVRS! Without integrating your IVRS with Call center, you can not say really that IVRS is improving customer service.  Integrating with CRM gives IVRS the features like identifying the caller with his all information and customer does not need to enter his identification details. This will shorten the time to serve the customer and customer will also stick to IVRS.

2. Allow Call Transfer to Human Agent

At any point of time, customer must be given option to speak to a customer care human executive! Many a time, caller knows that he has to speak to human agent only to explain his requirements or problem, and then if he does not find any option to speak to live agent, he might simply turn to your competitor. This is specifically true for general purpose call center or customer care. One must do a fine balance with call screening with live agent call transfer.

3. Never Ask Customer Details Twice

In many IVRS, it is observed that customer has to enter his details for using IVRS and and then when he is transferred to a human agent, he needs to repeat his customer details again to the human agent! Never ever do that! This will irritate the customer to no end and your customer care center may turn into customer irritation center. It may happen also when customer goes back to IVRS main menu and then he may require to enter his customer details again, never do that.

4. Precise and To the Point

Be precise and to the point in presenting any information. Also make navigation menus short, easy to navigate.  You should keep an option to transfer the call to a human agent at every level as well as go back to main menu. Long menu will scare away the caller and he would tend to forget the options.

5. IVRS Information

Always keep an Help Option the main menu. It should have information about the IVRS itself and what customer can expect from it and what not! Also give caller the approximate time for connecting to live agent! I would suggest you not to play prompts like “Your Call is important to us, please be online while we are connecting your call to customer care officer.”, this kind of message if repeated many times, may infuriate a caller, specially when the caller has a complaint.

The above list of five is not exhaustive! But the bottom line of most effective use of IVRS is : Customise your IVRS as per your business.

I keep getting requirement from many customers to deploy IVR in 2 days time after they have bought the CTI card.

Is it possible to deploy IVR in 2 days ? According to me, Impossible unless you have the following assets in place:

1. Voice Artist both male and female and for at least three language if the IVR is to be deployed in India. ( In India, normally IVR has to be in three languages, 1. English 2. Hindi and 3. Any one of the 17 Languages called MIL ( Modern Indian Language)

2. A Studio with sound recordists available 24 hours.

3. Script Writer.

4. Call Flow designer.

5. Coder who uses either C++ or Any third Party development tools.

For deploying IVR, one should not keep only 2 days! That is the bottom line. IVR may be really a complicated system which may require proper planning. There are then unknown problems like integration of switch! I have a experience with IRIS IVDX switch. We had to literally strugle to implement Call Transfer using a D300 card with ISDN PRI-E .

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Here are few checklist one must complete before they proceed to deploy a IVR system

1. Complete or at least 90% Call Flow in proper Flow Chart.

2. Complete script as per the flow chart.

3. Successful database integration if any.

4. Successful Integration with Switch and CTI Hardware. Or at least keep support from Switch End ready.

5. Make test calls available. Many a times I have found sites where you can not make call to the IVR number or no extension or phone number to make an Outgoign call. Also, when you are implementing features like, play IVR options when all agents extesnions are busy, play “All our customer care exceutves are busy, please wait or press 1 to lodge your complaint”, then you need at least 3 extensions.

6. Normally Switch has many features! If those features are propelry exploited, IVR can be really intelligent. For example, Automatic Change Number announcement.

1. Caller Dials a number say 2345. 2345 was changed to say, 3345.Now SWITCH will capture the DNI 2345, and transfer the the call to IVR number, say, 1200, sending 2345 as CLI.
2. IVR will receive the call, announce that the number 2345 ( captured by IVR as CLI), is changed to 3345, press 1 if you want to listen to the changed number again,  if you want us to transfer the your call to new number 3345, press 2 or disconenct.
3. IVR will transfer the call to 3345.

To achieve the above, SWITCH  has to capture the DNI of the caller and convert it to its CLI, before call is sent IVR. IVRS, being Analog, it can detect only CLI.

It might be little technical, but your SWITCH support will understand them!

7. Recording of all scripts as well as in all languages.

8. Availability of Sound Editing Software as well as Sound Editor.

I hope, I have argued successfully that deployment of IVRS is not a 2day job!

The menus that IVRS can provide are either voice enabled or DTMF enabled. Now what does that mean?

• In a voice enabled IVRS, caller will have to choose his required menu option by speaking out a word or a phrase as if he is talking to a human! IVR is supposed to recognize his speech and provide him required information as per his choice!
• In a DTMF enabled IVRS, caller has to press a button on the keypad of his telephone instrument or mobile phone( Dude, where is my button on my iPhone 3G phone ?). DTMF stands Dual Tone Multiple Frequencies! It is in-band signaling ( meaning it’s a signaling that works in voice band, 300Hz to 3400Hz). So when you press a button or a key on your telephone instrument, you produce a DTMF, remember you get to hear a sound whenever you press a key? You are producing a DTMF corresponding to the number of the key. This number is detected by IVRS and provides you with your desired information.

Well, you can definitely have a hybrid menu using both the methods!

Now that you know availability of two kinds of menus, are you in fix to decide which one to choose for your IVRS ? Here I am, I am listing out the advantage and disadvantage of both the menu system. And I will also give you thumbs rule for choosing menu.

Here are the advantages of having voice or speech enabled menu

• Big advantage for Mobile users. Its much easier just to speak out the menu since mobile phones are small to press buttons! You need to listen the menu, bring it in front to look the screen, press the button, then again put the phone in your ear!
• Unlimited and user-friendly menu options.
• Easy menu browsing. One can jump from one menu to the other easily.
• Simple speech, no jargon of learning tone dialing, pulse dialing or DTMF key.

Here are disadvantages

• ASR ( Automatic Speech recognition) does not work successfully in every condition. It may not work in noisy conditions, weak signal, disturbance on lines.
• It might irritate many people for making them to talk to a machine. And then its not easy to talk some phrases or words like a conversation.

Advantages of DTMF based menu

• Ease of use in case of landline and while people using a hands-free for mobile.
• Widely known and trained standard. Almost everyone now a days know about tone dialing or using IVRS by pressing keys.
• Very reliable as the DTMF signals does not get distorted even while speaking simultaneously.
• Easy to develop and commission. Faster response by IVRS.

Disadvantage

• Finding keys may be difficult as per menu prompts, specially for new mobile phones with touch pad only keys.
• Many people does not understand pulse dialing, tone dialing, hash buttons, star button etc.

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So, over all, having DTMF is better where your target user of the IVRS is more and come from diverse background. If you are expecting educated, tech-savvy clients to dial your IVRS, give the ‘xing’ thing, Voice based menu!

Over all its recommended that DTMF be used and Voice based menu should be used as alternative of DTMF based menu. So, hybrid menu options can be chosen. For IVRS using as VAS(Value Added Service) or Voice Portal, having Hybrid Menu has become essential.

Fact is, an IVRS is a technical interface to humans, just like a web site is. And just like many web sites, it was probably built and programmed by some engineers without a lot of direction from Marketing or Customer Service. There’s really no reason at all why the folks optimizing the web site should not also optimize the phone system too – especially if they do a good job with the web site in terms of usability! Here are the guidelines for optimizing usability:

1. Be Specific and to the point.
Once the voice prompts and information are recorded, each and every sentence, word should be examined if they are required or not. The message should be conveyed in shortest possible phrase. Unfortunately there is no way to predict effectiveness of the IVR prompts except testing with real callers. Some menus may require little descriptions to make it more understandable to the caller.
2. Setting Priority of Information
The biggest drawback in IVRS visa-a-vis its counterparts are, they have to be presented in serial manner, ie. The menu is played one option then the next one. Its unlike a website, where all options, links are presented visually in the webpage and some links are blinking, some are bold etc. Alas, in an IVR Applications, one does not have that luxury! The implication here is that you need to find out which paths through the system are going to be the “journeys” most traveled by your users, and you need to put these at the top of the menus, to make sure the experience is short, direct and hassle-free.
3. Build Prototype and test on real users before commissioning
Acceptability of your IVR System by your customer can not be properly predicted. So the best way is to build a prototype and ask your clients to use it and get their feedback. You should make a complete call flow of your IVRS, circulate among your clients and get feedback. You may also circulate your script. Many times, scripts looking good and logical may not sound logical while listening on telephone!
4. Professional Scripting for IVRS prompts and information
All the sentences or voice prompts, information should be professionally scripted. Scripting should be done as per the industry where the IVRS is being used as well as the target callers.

5. Use short menu and Menu style
Designing a effective and attractive menu is a real challenge in IVR Application. Menu should be short in options, brief in discussion. Also you should always describe the option before speaking the option number. For example, use “to know about our promotional sales discount, press 3”, instead of press 3 to know about our promotional sales discounts”. It will help caller remember the option as per the description. Long menu tends to bore the customer specially when his required option is spoken at last.
6. Use professional Voice-Over Artist
In a IVR System, audio is of prime importance. Poor quality audio, background noise, poorly edited audio will give a poor impression on your company. It will also give them impressions about how your company works. So it is strongly advised that one should hire a professional voice-over artist and get all scripts recorded in a studio by a sound recorder. It may cost you little more, but it is worth every penny.
7. Avoid Promotional Messages
Normally, you should avid putting any promotional messages in between your prompts or information. You actually never know who might call you. Though some marketing people in your organization may insist on putting some promotional messages, remember one thing, a person may get impatient and can be in a bad mood. It may serve the other way around then!
8. Make IVRS Adaptive and Intelligent
IVRS should be capable of intelligently adapting menu options. For example, it should wish “Good Morning” in the morning and “Good Afternoon” at afternoon. One should also monitor and analyze call patterns, oft-used menu options, hang ups, call failure, dropped calls periodically and change the priorities of menus. Adapting to customer need is the key to success of a IVRS.

9. Never rely exclusively on Help menu
Though one should provide thoroughly user-tested help menu, but never rely on them. No one wants to read help menu or refer to help menu except when one is stuck up. So, it is advisable that menus be designed smartly self-evident and obviously logical. Also never give excuses like “its all described in the help menu” to customer.
10. Use standards
There are a number of standards for IVR system design, such as HFES 200.4 and ISO/IEC 13714. One should use them to test their IVRS for usability test. Best way of USABILITY of IVRS is still hiring an IVRS EXPERT like yours sincerely.
11. Avoid Long gaps in between menus or information
Never pause long for any reason. Once caller gets silence for more than 3 seconds or so, he might think something has gone wrong and press some other keys! But then a menu with short gap can make a rapid fire menu and will be difficult to use for caller. A perfectly paced menu should be adopted as per target caller, complexity of the features. The best way to achieve perfectly paced prompts are again testing by users!
12. Make Voice sounding natural as much as you can
Here is an important guideline. The prompts, information should sound natural sentence. For example, in normal conversations, one normally emphasizes on the last word. The IVRS recording should follow the same pattern too. For that reason, a sentence should be recorded fully with the complete script. Putting new words in between a sentence should be avoided. Also, one should never use “constructed sentences” where words are recorded separately! It will not have a proper flow of a sentence and give very poor quality and wrong impression. It will also reflect unprofessional approach in the business.
13. Keep your features small
IVRS should have small specific features! For a large organizations, where more features are must, it is advisable to use separate numbers for user to dial. Or user should be given option to access particular service by some direct dialing method. Now a days many exchanges offer facility to configure range of a number. For example, 56969XX where 56969 is actual number, but user can dial 5606901 for sales department, 5696902 for accounts, etc. This helps serve the customer better!

So, you thought IVRS is some Computer Telephony Integration Hardware and a piece of Software, installed and running 24 hours a day on a Personal Computer to play recorded voice as soon as a caller calls the IVRS Number?
You have completely under-estimated IVRS. But then don’t loose your heart, you belong to the majority! And it’s perfectly fine to underestimate.

But then imagine the following scenarios:-

1. You call your telephone company customer service number. You are welcome to Customer Care service. Then some music. Then it starts giving out long list of options to choose. Some options are for pressing a key and some require you to speak one word or some words. But then its not what you were looking, so you want to speak to an customer care executive. Normally its by pressing 9. So, dutifully you press 9. Another melody. Then you get to hear, “Your Call is Important to us”, please wait while we are transferring your call. Another melody! Already 2 minutes gone, Your call is important to us, again, cool, they are making your call important by making you talking to a machine! 4 minutes gone by then, and finally you get to hear, All our customer care executives are busy. Your call is important to us. Please wait while we are trying to connect you to our customer care executive. The approximate time for connection is 4 minutes. Kindly hold the line or please call later. You take the advice. You hang up and call after 10 minutes. The same procedure follows! What you do? Utter some profanities/expletives and slam the phone down?
2. You call large enterprise customer support number. Welcome prompts! Then a list of teeth breaking technical sounding department list. You somehow manage to remember the option for your department and press the right key or speak the right word and IVRS could understand! Then the next prompt comes! This particular division is closed now! Thank you for calling. And then you hear a busy tone! Did they shut the door in front of your face ? What you can do? Slam the phone. Stamp your feet on your floor?

There are many more similar situations! You scratch your head and wonder what made them call themselves Customer Care Service? Where you did not even get the care, let alone the service you were looking?

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The answer is lack of knowledge of usability of IVRS by the design engineer or the company!

Make no mistake, like any other software, IVRS is also normally designed and developed by some software engineers without much input from either marketing or customer service people. And they will concentrate more on software features like call flow, database integration, TTS Integration, smart speech recognitions and many more.

What are the consequences of IVRS with poor usability? They are:-
1. Frustrated and Angry customers ( you will hear lot of expletives and profanities you record your IVRS calls and dare to listen them)
2. High call duration but no satisfactory service to the customer. Poor usage of IVRS
3. High hang ups.
4. Increased cost as it will transfer more calls to customer care executives.
5. Decline in customer satisfaction affecting brand value of the company.

But then you need not worry, I have a collection of tips to increase usability of IVRS. To be posted shortly.