Enhancing The Self-Service Experience

To get the rest of this free white paper, please click here.

Self-Service Tops Deployment Strategies

An extract from IVR Improvement Strategies 2010, a new research report published by the Ascent Group, Inc.

IVR Integrated Voice Response (IVR) is the most widely used call center technology worldwide, after the switch or Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). IVR is a telecommunications technology that accepts a combination of voice and telephone touch-tone keypad input and provides appropriate responses in the form of voice, fax, callback, e-mail and perhaps other media. IVR technology has evolved from DTMF (Dial Tone Multi-Frequency, or touch-tone) to ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) in recent years with the maturity of voice recognition engines.

A Little History

In the technology’s infancy, Auto Attendants (AA) and Voice Response Units (VRU) provided menu options and scripting tools to direct callers to certain queues or to provide information to callers, with minimal interaction. The IVR brought integration with enterprise information systems and the ability to interact with callers to customize questions and responses. ASR, which is slowing coming into its own, adds conversational interaction with callers as a way to gather input for interaction and customization.

It’s taken years for IVR acceptance to grow, but only after companies realized they were alienating customers at the expense of automation. The push in recent years has emphasized the importance of the “customer experience” and its linkage to customer satisfaction and profitability.

Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) is slowly gaining in popularity, as our survey results confirm. ASR facilitates communication between man and the machine by letting callers speak, often naturally, commands and menu options, rather than pushing touch-tone buttons on the telephone keypad. Recognized speech is then digitally converted so it can be processed by the IVR and other associated systems. Correctly designed speech recognition IVR applications offer a more personal and pleasant customer experience—a more human interface.

ASR has evolved over the past few years. Earlier applications were clumsy with low recognition rates, frustrating callers and the companies that implemented the solution. Recent technologies have improved recognition rates by increasing vocabulary and dealing with other challenges like pitch, accents, speech patterns, and foreign languages. Speech recognition technologies include: small and large vocabulary, natural language, speaker verification, and text-to-speech.

Evolving Technologies Expand Opportunities

New standards in speech technology are giving a much-needed boost to the predominately proprietary IVR technology market. SALT (Speech Application Language Tags), VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language), and CCXML (Call Control XML) are making it possible to create solutions that work on multiple platforms—making it possible to use the same infrastructure and language to manage web-based and IVR self-service.

SALT concentrates on speech communications from phones, cell phones, PDAs, or other hand-held devices (multimodal) and host computers. Companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are raising the bar for consumer expectations by creating voice-activated search services to deliver location-based information such as directions to cell phones and other handheld devices.

VoiceXML helps IVR voice applications be more easily integrated with internet-based applications. It allows voice applications to be created in an environment familiar to anyone with any web development experience. VoiceXML’s major goal is to bring the advantages of web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications—the voice portal. Voice portals make it possible for callers to obtain news, stock prices, e-mail, and other information from the Internet and perform transactions using voice commands.

CCXML markup language is designed to provide telephony call control support for VoiceXML. CCXML provides control for how phone calls are placed, answered, transferred, conferenced, and more. CCXML allows the industry to leverage the strength of Web platforms and technologies to intelligently control calls on and off the telephone network.

Making voice applications easily web-compatible allows for voice applications to be delivered more easily through a hosted model and through the Internet, through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Many companies and call centers are actively replacing old PBX/ACDs with VoIP telephony.

In fact, these new standards have enabled a standardized approach to deploying speech-enabled applications throughout a corporation, including: voice-driven IVRs, speech-enabled voice mail and email, voice-activated dialing, and text to speech. Now the corporation can automate internal and external business processes more efficiently through voice interaction. The new standards and open platforms are also creating a shift from hardware to applications and services. The standards are also opening up a proprietary market, enabling more vendors and solutions to offer new services and solutions.

There is certainly a great deal of potential moving forward. All of the mistakes and lessons learned, however painful, are advancing this technology. Many companies are now actively addressing IVR usability through customer-friendly design. Our study results confirm this transformation—IVR-handled calls have increased as a result of continuous improvement in IVR usability and functionality.

Customer Experience Rules

Companies are now realizing the importance of aligning internal quality goals and measurements with the customer or end-user’s quality goals and expectations—measuring the “customer experience” rather than management’s interpretation of the customer experience. This approach is now being reflected in call quality monitoring and the coaching of agents. The same concept is also applied to the “virtual” rep—whether it’s the IVR or the web site.

In short, IVR technology offers companies more cost effective call management through call segmentation, automated call handling, and informational messaging. IVR offers customers 24-hour services and privacy. IVRs can also help companies manage peak call volumes, enabling companies to be more responsive to more customers.

Ultimately, IVR success rests on the quality and outcome of the conversation or interaction, just like calls into the call center or visits to a web site. Regardless of the channel—IVR, email, letter, voice, website—it all comes down to the quality of the interaction and the ultimate resolution.

Make sure you have a clear strategy for your IVR deployment. While the technology has a lot of potential, successful deployment requires a good deal of customer research and a clear strategy. Most companies pursue IVR technology for the following reasons:

Improve the customer experience:
- offer self-service options
- 24-hour self-service
- Privacy
Maximize cost savings:
- through automation,
- through streamlining and system integration,
- more effective customer authentication, call routing and call flow management,
- cost effective overflow call handling to handle peaks

Properly deployed, IVR technology offers companies more cost effective call management through call segmentation, automated call handling, and informational messaging. IVRs can also help companies manage peak call volumes, improving overall responsive to customers. However, it’s important to work through these goals prior to development to ensure that your technology is properly aligned to your strategy. No matter how badly you may want to maximize your cost savings with IVR technology, if the customer experience is poor, so goes your entire deployment.

Benchmark Study of IVR Deployment

To better understand the state-of-IVR, the Ascent Group recently conducted a benchmarking project to evaluate IVR performance, to understand the never-ending IVR deployment challenges, and to identify IVR “best practices”. Twenty-nine companies from eight industries participated in the research. This is the 8th study of IVR deployment study conducted by the Ascent Group.

The main objective of the study was to evaluate the strategic deployment of interactive voice response technology and to identify best practices or opportunities for improvement. Secondary objectives included understanding:

The range of deployment strategies;
Primary business objectives and drivers of IVR deployment;
How IVR technology fits into a customer service strategy, and
How companies incorporate the customer perspective.

Participants were asked to share the history of their IVR deployment, including design strategies, performance statistics, best practices, and lessons learned. The study also asked companies to relate how they measure the success of their IVR implementation and to relay any improvement plans moving forward. The following pages summarize the study’s findings, observations, and recommendations.

What Did We Learn?

Participants rank providing optional self-services as the most important IVR deployment strategy. Also ranked highly, deploying the IVR for routing purposes. Selectively forcing callers through the IVR, handling all calls (with no opting out to an agent) and operating solely as a back-end overflow system figure less prominently. Forcing callers through IVR applications increases system utilization and success, especially for callers who are unfamiliar with system options and functions.

Selective forcing can encourage higher IVR usage for the more routine tasks while freeing up representatives to handle the more complex service issues. Selective forcing can also be dynamically deployed. Companies can selectively force callers into IVR applications during peak calling periods or off-hours, but allow callers to choose during slower periods.

The most popular IVR self-service application was not surprising—account inquiry, something that is common to all industries. Seventy-six percent of participants offered the ability to obtain account and billing information through the IVR.

IVR technology has been deployed within our panel, on average, for 7 to 8 years.Only 29 percent of study participants utilize automated speech recognition (ASR). Another 14 percent have near-term plans to implement speech recognition in the near future. In total, only 43 percent of participants have or plan to have ASR. In a similar study conducted by the Ascent Group in 1996, speech recognition was offered by less than 10 percent of participants. At that time, most were waiting for the technology to improve, and it clearly has. However, deployment since then has been slow. In contrast, seventy-one percent of participants have deployed CTI (Computer-Telephony-Integration) in conjunction with their IVR.

continued…

The Ascent Group, Inc.