We’ve all been stuck on the phone trying to get information from an automated telephone system in a battle against the machine that sometimes seems to be designed specifically to prevent us from finding what we’re looking for. While that almost certainly wasn’t the intent of the automated phone system, poor execution can leave a multitude of customers with a bad taste in their mouth.

A well designed IVR (Interactive Voice Response) phone system can be a valuable resource, but a poorly designed system will only reflect poorly on your organization’s communication and customer service. With that being said, here are a few pointers to help make sure you are designing a good call flow for your automated IVR system:

• Outline the Call Flow for Your IVR
  A flow chart or an outline is the perfect place to start. You really need to take the time to plan out how someone is going to interact with your phone system long before you start creating the actual IVR in your software. Taking the time to plan it all through at the beginning will help you keep the big picture in mind and to avoid creating a long trail of prompts.

• Think Like Your Customers
  Always keep your customers in mind. Why will they be calling the system? Put the options for the most frequently used items at the beginning so they can be accessed quickly and easily. At every step along the way think about how the message will come across from a customer’s point of view.

• Keep It Simple
  Don’t try to do everything. Less is more. With an automated phone system you want to keep the number of key presses to minimum. Trying to do too many things just gives the callers more places that they can get lost along the way. Really think about what options should be available and who is calling in. For example, if you need to offer different services to customers and vendors it might be better to have two different systems rather thane on that does everything, keeping each line simplified and tailored to its purpose instead of trying to do everything on one line.

• Keep Menu Prompts Clear and Concise
  The longer your message, the harder it is going to be for a caller to remember everything that is being said and what they need to do to interact with the system. Be sure to use the same language as your customers, avoiding industry slang and terminology callers might not be familiar with.

• Offer Universal Commands
  Options like pressing the star key (*) to return to the main menu at any point during a call, or an option to repeat a prompt will make it much easier for callers to navigate the IVR system.

• Give the Option to Talk to Someone or Leave a Voice Message
  The goal of an IVR system may be in part to reduce the number of calls that your staff needs to handle, but there will be times when the system does not fulfill a customer’s needs. You need to offer these callers the alternative to either talk to a live person or leave a message for someone to call them back.

• Test, Test, Test, and Test Some More
  Test the call flow every step along the way test the flow. Think of as many possible scenarios as you can and go through the process yourself. Get other people to try it out, too. Never think of your system as being completely done. You need to monitor how well it is working, and make sure that you are offering the right options at the right time. Get feedback from your staff and customers. Designing a good IVR call system should be an ongoing process.

These are just a few of the tips to help you get started on the right foot when you are implementing an interactive voice response system. Taking the time to thoroughly plan out a new IVR call flow, before you even start working with an application like IVM interactive voice response software, can make a significant difference in the final result and is well worth the time and effort.

These are many small, but important design problems one often tends to overlook. I have tried to list them all. Kindly send me feedback if you have encountered any such problems. In a DTMF Based Menu Following are the frequently overlooked problems :->

1. Long Menu
Be it DTMF Driven menu or Voice driven menu, long menu with many options should be avoided. The maximum menu options should be 5. ( Maximum 7 in unavoidable cases. ) Long menu tires a caller out and it becomes very difficult for caller to remember the options too. Also if a caller’s required option is played at the last of the menu( for example 9th option in the menu, one has to hear out first 8 options before hearing the 9th option.), it becomes really irritating.

2. Long Period of Silence
Long period of silence at any case should be avoided. Maximum allowable silence period should be 3 Seconds. After that a proper timeout message should be played.

3. Rejection of key pressing during prompt playing.
It is often noticed that IVR ignores the key pressed while it is playing menu options. This should be avoided. Specially while playing a long menu of 4 and above options. During playing prompts too, keys pressed by caller should be accepted and processed accordingly.

4. Hang Up calls
IVRS should never hang up the call at any condition. Its like slamming the phone on you! You cause enough pain already by making a human interact with a machine, so it will be worthwhile that machine does not hang up on the human!

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5. Scripting of IVR Prompts
Scripting of IVR menus and any information should be properly written. Many people do not give enough importance in scripting their information. Scripts like You have pressed a wrong key, You have failed to press a key in time, etc. should eb avoided.

6. Confusing and illogical presentation of Information
All information given by IVRS should be brief, to-the-point, in simple english and complete. Unnecessary jargons should be avoided.

7. Failure recovery
On failure of accessing any data from a database or online information, IVR should inform politely to the caller.

8. Unprofessional Voice
Cheap sounding and unprofessionaly recorded, low quality voice should be avoided. One should always get prompts recorded by professional voice artist. Background music should be added only when the situation demands or service requires it.

In a Voice Driven Menu:-

9. In a Voice Driven menu the menu tends to be extra focussing on entertaining the caller, rather than providing service required by him.

10. Attempt to have a conversation with caller should be avoided. Even though ASR technology works fine, still it can not have a conversation with a human.

11. Avoid having excessive human like Interface.

12. Avoid playing prompts as soon as call is connected. Give some silence or play some music for small duration.