The Brave New World of Self Service
But for applications with limited menu options or easily mastered transaction types, such as those offered by a bank or credit card company, touch-tone commands get the job done faster. If ASR is on your planning horizon, think about how a touch-tone interface might figure into the mix, giving callers the choice for how they’ll interact with you. The greatest value of ASR may be in helping to identify callers and steer their calls to the right place when the caller needs assisted service.
Whether touch-tome or ASR, IVR technology is undergoing a transformative change — from voice user interface (VUI) to voice user intelligence. Companies such as EIG and Voxify offer services and software that optimize the customer experience while they are self-serving. Business rules assess customer profile information, preferences, transaction history and real-time responses to caller prompts to anticipate caller needs. This assessment expedites routing to appropriate resources or speeds access to self service applications. Interactive Digital offers another example with its Adaptive Audio that monitors caller interactions — whether touch-tone or speech — and adjusts speed and menus, or guides lost (or frustrated) callers to an agent.
Systems like this can consider what’s happening right now, for this caller, based on background noise, their experience or familiarity with the application, and their focus and ability to effectively respond. A similar movement adds intelligence to the “I” in a Web graphical user interface (GUI). Both have the potential to make self service more customer friendly and efficient. Success of these tools improves with productive engagement between customer service subject-matter experts with the technologists who design and build the systems.
Even with the best of designs, there are times when customers get “stuck.” By applying a bit more business intelligence, IVR applications can identify distressed callers and offer assistance to provide callers with a successful outcome. Such interventions are common for Web-based applications where chat windows offer access to skilled resources. Web retailers leverage this capability to transform “window shoppers” to paying customers. And out on the assisted service frontier, virtual assistants answer questions and help visitors find their way around a site. If we look “under the hood,” we’d find a sophisticated knowledge base with a text-to-speech interface. But, as users, we simply interact with Alaska Airlines’ Jenn or Ikea’s Anna and make a point of visiting again if only to experience the novelty.
Of course, the Jenns and Annas of the world cannot exist without an organized repository of information from which to draw responses. A knowledge management system fits the bill with search capabilities that use a natural language interface. This search tool focuses on the intent of the question and returns the best possible answer drawn from the organization’s collective information resources. Some companies use knowledge management to provide scripted responses to customer emails as they are submitted.
“Hot links” give customers the option to escalate their inquiry to agents if their needs are not met. Both parties win through a combination of shortened email turnaround time and improved access to the “experts” (when necessary) by filtering out the routine inquiries. (This approach can also skirt the issue of mail clients placing email responses into the “spam” folder.) As an added bonus, permissions-based workflows exist for agents and customers to add to the knowledge base dynamically and/or rate the quality of responses, thereby increasing the value of the information and tool.
