EGAIN, IVR System, IVRS Company

I came across an interesting IVRS ( Interactive Voice Response System ) application on net while browsing Google search results. eGain, the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, headquartered in California, USA, has recently added “Intelligent Voice Self-Service Solution to Its Multichannel Customer Interaction Hub Suite”!

That must be a smart IVRS application! As per their press release, their solution enhances user experience in the IVR “integrating it with other communication channels“. By applying web self-service best practices such as seamless escalation, unified cross-channel content, and CBR-guided interactions to IVR, it redefines phone self-service and increases customer adoption of the channel, as they claim.

eGain has patented CBR System ( Case Based Reasoning) which captures agents expertise of a contact center and with help of this, the IVR Software can prompt customers with intelligent questions based on caller replies and finally provide the correct information to the caller.

With eGain IVR, businesses are able to:
a. Allow IVR users to access the same information and complete the same transactions that they would be able to accomplish through other channels.
b. Offer context-aware escalation to multiple channels, including live agent channels such as phone and chat, and asynchronous agent channels such as email.

About eGain:
eGain (OTC BB: EGAN.OB) is the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software for on-site or on-demand deployment. For over a decade, hundreds of the world’s largest companies have relied on eGain to transform their traditional call centers, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs (CIHs). Based on the Power of One™, the concept of one unified platform for multichannel customer interaction and knowledge management, eGain solutions improve customer experience, enable self-service adoption, optimize service process end to end, increase sales, and enhance contact center performance.

Complete details of the press release, click here.

Many people seem to confuse with IVRS and Auto-attendant and Answering Machine!

Though  Auto attendant and Answering Machine may be compared, but comparing IVRS with either of them is comparing armored vehicle with F-117! ( Hope I have given the right analogy.:) ), they have similarities but they have major difference in usage, scale and features.

What is IVRS, to know one can read What is IVRS, a previous article in this blog.  Or one can search in Yahoo or Google or Wikipedia. And here are few differences I am listing:-

1. Auto Attendant attends a call, and can transfer a call to extension as per caller dialing. IVRS can do all these too. But IVRS can retrieve data and playback information which Auto Attendant can not do! Answering Machine normally has one prompt which gets played after certain number of rings if the calls go unattended, and record a message from the caller. Also it plays back the recorded messages. These are the functons of Answering Machine.

2. IVRS is very smart and intelligent system while, Auto Attendant and Answering Machines can not be said to have any intelligence! They do few things as per pre-programmed! IVRS has vast applications! It has not applications in almost every industrial sectors including pharmaceutical  research activities too.

3. IVRS can work like an answering machine or auto attendant, but they can not work like an IVRS apart from the above tasks!

4. IVRS can work like a voice portal while no one can even imagine auto attendant or answering machine to work like voice portal.

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5. Auto Attendant and answering machine are low cost equipment, normally built in phone instrument or EPABX. While IVRS requires Server Class PCs to run, costly CTI cards and costly software engineers. Also IVRS can have few dedicated IVRS blogs, while I doubt if auto attendant or answering machine will have more than 2/3 pages in some websites.

6. Auto Attendant and Answering Machine has limited configurations and limited recording options, IVRS has almost unlimited applications and configurations!

I hope these six reasons should be enough to convince anyone the difference between IVRS, Auto Attendant and Answering Machine! There is a Voice mail System too which is a CTI application again, but a single function of storing recorded message! So, one can think of Voice Mail System (VMS) as a one kind of IVR Application .

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!