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Enhancing The Self-Service Experience
An extract from IVR Improvement Strategies 2008, 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.
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. VoIP is also becoming popular with consumers and small businesses, mainly because VoIP service is not currently subject to the taxes and fees incurred by traditional landline telephone service.
In fact, 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 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. And realistically, IVR technology, and its earlier descendants, is blazing the trail to automated self-service and voice-enabled services. All of the mistakes and lessons learned, however painful, are advancing this technology.
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.
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.
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”. Thirty-one companies from seven industries participated in the research. This is the seventh 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 “selectively forcing callers through the IVR prior to speaking with an agent” as the most important IVR deployment strategy. 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. Eighty-four 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 16 percent of study participants utilize automated speech recognition (ASR). Another 19 percent have near-term plans to implement speech recognition in the near future. In total, only 35 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.
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