Introduction
This is a common reaction from callers who have had a poor experience
with an automated telephone system. They may have been trapped in
an endless loop or have had to wait for long periods - becoming
increasingly annoyed when the machine tells them “Your call
is important to us, please stay on the line” or “You
are number 34 in the queue, we will answer your call shortly”.
Some companies are even exploiting this dissatisfaction in their
marketing, claiming they have no automation, and will always put
the caller through to an agent straight away. But do all callers
hate using ‘those machines’ as is commonly thought,
or do situations exist where people may actually prefer them? In
this issue of Talking Technologies we address some of these points:
Some callers like automated systems!
Lloyds TSB’s Phonebank Express service utilises speech-based
automation to handle over 70,000 calls per day, it has processed
over 7m calls in total, representing 84m transactions, and has a
customer base of over 1m people. The system provides customers with
balance enquiries, funds transfers, payment facilities and overdraft
authorisation. The bank’s research shows that if such services
are quick, simple and reliable, customers will readily adopt them.
Indeed from a security and privacy perspective, some people prefer
to interact with a machine than a human. The bank can also benefit
as well as the customer - Lloyds has estimated that the service
has saved them the equivalent cost of running two large call centres.
It appears then that it’s not just a case of ‘people
don’t like automated telephone systems’, the situation
is more complex. Let’s look at some possible explanations. |
 |
Caller
Profile
The success of an automated system will be affected to some extent
by the profile of the customer base. Certain types of people are
more receptive to automation than others. Contrast two extreme groups:
The technologically ‘switched on’ under-35’s readily
adopt automated systems, and may even prefer using them, whereas
the technologically naive older consumer, will generally be less
receptive. Of course many customers fall between these two extremes
but it is worth investigating your company’s particular customer
profiles to understand how receptive they may be to automation.
This may allow you to segment the way in which automated services
are offered, influence the design of the services, application persona
and voice artist choices: We have seen examples where entertaining,
well designed applications actually have a significant positive
impact on the caller experience.
Human resourcing
There is often a misconception that it is the IVR system which is
keeping people on hold – it gets in the way of the customer
achieving the required call outcome. Of course the customer is being
kept on hold because there aren’t enough agents to take the
calls, but its not surprising the IVR gets the bad press! The unpredictability
of call arrival rates, and pressure to keep agent costs down will
make delays inevitable from time to time. However if the IVR is
used to offer the customer the opportunity to complete the transaction
automatically themselves, customer satisfaction levels improve,
and pressure on the agent will reduce.
Good Design
A successful automated system should deliver a positive user experience,
just like a good agent! The design of the smallest aspect of even
the simplest application will affect user perception. It is
well worth road-testing every application with |
|
customers,
or getting specialist help to “audit” applications for
your entire company. It is very difficult for your own staff to
give a real user perspective on these services. We have seen many
examples of applications which trap users, with no real option for
breaking out to an agent, or do not give callers the information
and options they require. These will be poorly adopted and ultimately
lose you customers.
Application Selection
Equally important is choosing suitable applications to automate:
picking one or two “killer” applications will have a
much more significant impact on costs, and customer satisfaction
levels than partially or badly automating every transaction.
Similarly, it is worth thinking out of the box to identify products
or services which make a virtue of automation. Think of the automated,
voice based equivalent of web-only discounted products and services.
They can provide great deals, but they are very upfront in telling
the customer that this is because they are automated. These applications
can even help you attract a new group of customers – rather
than servicing existing customers at reduced costs.
We have also often found that designing applications which politely
offer customers the choice of waiting for an agent or using an automated
process are often well received.
Conclusions
So we can see that not everyone ‘hates’ using automated
telephone systems and some people prefer them in certain circumstances.
The secret to leveraging the most benefit from automation techniques
is to deploy them in appropriate areas of the business and ensure
that application design is seriously considered - this will
have a major impact on the success of any IVR or Speech Recognition
initiative. |
