Sabio identifies five key drivers for successful contact centre voice self-service projects

New Sabio research highlights where organisations should focus to help improve the customer experience

LONDON – 7 March, 2006 – Sabio, the innovative contact centre services and solutions company, has identified five key guidelines that it believes organisations need to follow if they are to realise the potential of IVR and speech technology in their contact centres. Sabio’s guidelines all focus on improving the customer experience, and clearly highlight steps that contact centre operators should take to make sure their customers are satisfied with their experience of automated interactions. Sabio’s research has identified the importance of organisations providing their customers with appropriate training and support to help ensure the success of voice self-service projects. Sabio’s guidelines cover:

• Choosing the right kind of transaction for automation
  
• Designing around customers and their objectives
  
• Thinking about the ‘end-to-end’ customer experience
  
• Bringing together contact centre and self-service systems
  
• Don’t just assume that customers will use your service

“Contact centres always seem to be an easy target for frustrated customers and, thanks to cost-led initiatives such as offshoring and self-service, many organisations have given their customers more than enough reasons to feel that way,” commented Sabio’s Founding Director, Adam Faulkner. “We shouldn’t be surprised that callers are unhappy when they come across poorly-designed IVR applications implemented by some call centre operators to help reduce costs. However, we’re convinced that the fault doesn’t lie with the IVR technology or with the speech-enabled systems used – it’s almost always because there’s been a lack of real thought about how to match an application to what customers are really looking to achieve when they call an organisation.

“We’re now finding that the latest speech technology is making it possible for organisations to replace frustrating touchtone systems with intelligent speech front-ends. If designed around the customer, these can speed up the identification and verification process, as well as provide a rapid and comfortable solution for transactional customer enquiries,” he continued. “By first thinking clearly about what we’re trying to do, and always considering how it will impact the customer, we can concentrate on creating IVR and voice self-service systems that people will actually want to use. That’s not an impossible goal – providing we all start asking the right kind of questions.”

Sabio’s Five Key Drivers for Successful Voice Self-Service:

1. Choosing the right kind of transaction for automation
In the past, many IVR applications have been justified solely on the potential cost savings an organisation could achieve, without due consideration of the suitability of a transaction for automation. With little understanding of the benefit that this automation will provide to the customer, it is unlikely that automation adoption targets will be reached.

2. Designing around customers and their objectives
Too many self-service applications seem to focus on simply automating a process, rather than presenting customers with an interface that can actually help them to complete their call objectives. By shifting the focus, callers benefit from using an application that appears to be created to service their objectives – it just happens to be an automated business process. Such an approach helps increase customer satisfaction, while also realising the full potential of IVR and speech.

3. Think about the ‘end-to-end’ customer experience
The last two years, particularly with the growth of the self-service culture, have also seen a dramatic change in how consumers want to communicate with the organisations they choose to. An increasingly important requirement is consistency across the different channels we use – whether it’s IVR, speech, web, voice, e-mail or SMS. This means that all of an organisation’s different contact centre systems and processes need to be aligned to help enable a joined-up service culture and deliver a consistent brand experience.

4. Bringing contact centre and self-service systems together
This kind of integration between IVR and agent is an important reminder that IVR sessions are an essential part of an organisation’s overall customer contact strategy. Too many organisations still see the IVR as a largely ignored box in the corner of the contact centre and not as an integral component. It’s time for those who are responsible for customer contact to get a better handle on what’s happening in the IVR before the caller speaks to an agent.

5. Don’t assume that customers will use your service
Having produced a working IVR application, it shouldn’t be assumed that customers will immediately recognise its value and the benefits it can provide. Early in the project a take-up strategy needs to be defined that supports the kind of relationship an organisation has with its target callers. For instance, in an open relationship such as railway timetable enquiries, the application needs to take the time to explain that the transaction will meet the task requirement and, where possible, it should sell the customer benefits of using the application. At the other extreme, in closed relationships such as telephone banking, techniques can be used such as marketing flyers or application personalisation, to help drive customer acceptance.