The Hidden Sources of Poor Customer Service
allowing them to zero out. In four of the IVRs, the system failed to recognize the zero key press or request for an operator altogether and simply hung up on the caller.
To avoid these situations, many contact center consultants suggest updating the IVR to an open-ended format that enables callers to avoid the cumbersome menu tree and move the call forward in a more natural flow. In Software Advice's study, though, only two of the 50 IVRs offered this kind of an exchange. While the technology to support natural language speech recognition has been available for years, few brands have taken advantage of it to improve the customer experience.
That's a fact that has limited the consumer appeal of IVRs. Recent research by Nuance Communications found that 32 percent of consumers said they would be more likely to use an IVR if it had a natural, conversational interface.
Avoid the Recognition Wreck
IVRs are also plagued with recognition errors that get in the way of the customer completing his task. Most speech technology vendors cite recognition accuracy figures of 90 percent or higher, but the reality is that recognition errors can occur between 20 percent and 30 percent of the time, according to many researchers.
The challenge is that there is a wide discrepancy between the recognition rate for a single word uttered in a controlled test environment and one said in the context of everyday life, with all the accompanying distractions and background noise.
While this is a frequent source of customer frustration, it's all too common for call centers to wait to upgrade their technology until they receive a significant number of complaints. Experts urge call center managers to be more proactive about technological issues, such as poor voice quality. They also recommend using automated testing solutions, random evaluations, and customer surveys, and tuning the IVR frequently using real caller data.
One way to limit recognition errors is by leading callers into simple yes/no questions as much as possible. Then, it's advisable to analyze the words or phrases used by callers to improve the system's vocabulary and usability. If callers often use terms that aren't understood by the IVR, make sure to add them to the grammars. If callers are commonly trying to opt for a selection that hasn't been accounted for, consider adding it to the menu.
The likelihood of errors also increases when IVR menus and recordings are long and confusing. An unwritten rule of IVR design is that top-line menus should be limited to no more than five options to reduce the cognitive demand on callers. However, 14 percent of the IVRs in Software Advice's study contained more than five options in the top menu. To make matters worse, the length of menu option recordings for some of the IVRs was 10 to 11 seconds; one extended to an excessive 19 seconds.
To further improve routing accuracy, experts suggest a practice known as language modeling, in which the IVR mimics customer language in its menu choices. If all of your customers are asking for "billing," for example, and the IVR is programmed only to respond to "account questions," it's probably time to upgrade and expand the IVR's speech recognition parameters, they advise.
Furthermore, the call flow and menu presentation should respect the issues customers want to address. If, for example, most callers want to check their account balances, make that the first selection in the menu. Not doing so could be costly, as 40 percent of callers will transfer out of an IVR if there's not a first-level menu choice that matches why they're calling, according to Nuance's research.
Over time, studying IVR reports should make it clear if the menu order is optimally effective or if it needs to be rearranged.
Scrap the Script
Scott Sachs, president of SJS Solutions, a contact center consulting firm, recommends that companies throw out their IVR and agent scripts altogether. "I hate scripts. I prefer guidelines for what to say," he states.
"Scripts are mechanical. You're not talking to customers...just reading a prepared speech," Sachs says. "You need to engage more in a dialogue today."
Companies that adhere too closely to scripts will often, at the end of the call, have the agent ask if the caller’s issue has been resolved. Ryan Pellet, chief strategy officer at Nexidia, an interaction analytics software company, says this is a bad idea. "The agent and the customer both know if the problem was taken care of," he says. "Asking that question has a negative correlation."
And, as Sachs points out, it can backfire, particularly if the issue wasn't resolved. In this case, he advises companies to change the closing