When IVR Turns Into the Blind Canyon With No Way Out

The best IVR I have seen implemented was to cover 7 languages in South East Asia. Each country has a local number to call which routes to a single location. The local phone number allowed us to identify the country and thus the local language. We had just launched and had not recorded all the IVR options in the local languages (intention was 4 across / up to 5 deep - in 7 languages!) so we started with just a "Thank you for calling XYZ company, please press 1 for or 2 for English" then calls where routed to the next available agent who could speak that language. Any routing past there was done the old fashioned way with a warm hand off of the transfering agent on the line with the customers to the recieving Tech. The system was writting up in most of the regional newspapers as a "how it should be done" and we recieved so many compliments from customers we left the IVR in it's version 0.5 state.
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Right on, Dr. Mitchell! Inappropriate implementation of IVR has been the subject of my rants lately as well -- although I will take issue with one of your points: CORRECTLY implemented IVR actually does make things better for the customer, and so I believe that stating the benefit while the customer is holding helps tell them / us what's going on. That is, if by telling the routing software that I'm calling in to check on an existing order, I can be routed to one of the agents who's actually connected to that system and trained to answer my question, rather than to "Inbound City" where thousands of agents can take my NEW order but have no access to my order history. This can shorten wait times and reduce transfers, which will make my customer experience a bit happier. That's IF the IVR system isn't too complex, doesn't have too many such "branches" and actually connects me to an agent who can help me after I've correctly input my one or two answers. I'll also add a beef: What about these systems where I'm asked to input my account number, or my cell phone number, or some identifier -- and THEN the agent has to ask for it again???? Where did that information go -- and if not to the agent or their system, then why the heck did I have to input it in the first place? Thanks as always for a thought-provoking column.
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There is a “standard” for IVR’s that was developed by Paul English; it’s called GetHuman (www.gethuman.com). The web site lists how to get around IVRs at most companies and the “GetHuman standards” that all IVR’s should meet. Paul is probably the best human-interface guy I’ve seen. He did the interface for Kayak among others. He should speak at all of the contact center conferences. Here’s a revenue opportunity. Buy old IVR’s (basically a PC with a few Dialogic boards) and open a small store at an airport with them placed on mats with a sledge hammer near-by. Play the typical IVR recordings from various airlines’ on speakers and offer 5 minutes with an IVR & sledgehammer for $10. Have a coat rack, a place to park your roll-aboard, stand back and watch the pieces fly. It will generate even more revenue if you offer to share the revenue with a charity.
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No argument from me regarding your IVR experiences. You are completely correct. There are ways though DR Brooks to achieve all and more than you suggest, and still enable organisations to use an IVR to contain their costs. Broadly, it’s called common sense, specifically, it directly relates to using the findings of the many studies of human cognitive behaviour and human/machine interactivity (anthropomorphism), to design an IVR that doesn’t annoy the very people they are designed to serve. Unfortunately, most IVR designers in the first place are rarely trained in this type of discipline so they don’t know the problems they are creating. If that’s not scary enough, many organisations that deploy the technology are all too often focussed so much on a design that fits their internal structure rather than their customers' needs, that they don’t realise the deployment hasn’t achieved the often lofty goals of self service for all and a fantastic experience for their customers anyway. In fact, most don’t even know that they are upsetting their customers because they simply never call their own phone number themselves. Thankfully, there are a number of organisations around the world such as Sterling Audits and EIG in the USA, and practitioners such as myself, who do have the skills to correct these flaws and improve the outcomes. The challenge for those of us frustrated by this insanity is to convince the offending organisations that they do indeed have a problem, that it is detrimental to their customer’s opinion of, and experience with them, and is adversely impacting their profits. That’s right, the very technology implemented to save money is often costing money through customer churn from poor experiences, and the need to increase live agent numbers to handle the calls that the poorly designed IVR was meant to contain. And yes, I’m just as frustrated as you Dr Brooks. In the spirit of the debate let’s challenge the readers to call their own IVRs, record the entire process, including the often interminable wait for a live agent to answer the call, and pass a copy of the recording around to their Senior Management, including, and most importantly the CEO, so he or she can play it in the car on the way home. Anyone up for the challenge….perhaps you’d like to post a copy of the recording on this blog for a public critique – let’s face it, it’s out there for public critique anyway…. Go on, see if you measure up. You may be surprised.
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