Designing Speech Self-service around the customer’s needs is the key to its success
Stepping into the shoes of your customers is a valuable exercise at any time, and when you’re implementing a speech self-service solution, it’s critical. Without answering basic questions such as ‘does the service benefit them?’, ‘does it do what the customer wants?’, ‘is it easy to use?’ and ‘is it appropriate?’ from the perspective of the customer, the system will never receive widespread take-up.
The key to success for the ever-broadening speech ‘revolution’ is to focus on the user in the design and development stages of the self-service application. Designing applications around the customers that must use them not only helps secure success with the caller, but also ensures the cost-effectiveness of the deployment as initial cost savings are fully realised.
Self-service, throughout its development and in all various guises, has depended heavily on its suitability for its target audience. The ATM machine is one of the most basic self-service devices, and yet it is accepted as the de facto means to obtain cash. It is convenient, secure, easy to use, and you always get what you want (as long as it is fully stocked, of course!). Cash depositing has not been so successful because it leaves too many questions with the customer – “did that go through ok?” – and not enough answers.
The successful take-up of speech self service is dependent on a three-step process:
- Automate the right task – does it lend itself to speech self service
- Understand the caller benefit
- Design the solution for the caller
Automating the right task needs your business to firstly identify the processes that could possibly be automated. For example, customer complaints procedures will not be suitable for automation because they need the adaptability of a human to resolve those complaints. Order processing, payments and information services on the other hand are more readily migrated to self-service. Those tasks that can be handled the most effectively – by a mix of people, process and technology, and that are viable in cost terms – will be the right tasks to identify for automation.
Developing caller archetypes and scenarios
Once you have defined whether a task can be automated, applying it to caller archetypes will help determine whether it should. This process helps identify the benefits that migrating to speech will have for your customers. This stage of the development is critical to ensure the system is deployed to customers that will use it – because if they won’t use it, there is no value in implementing it at all.
The application of self-service scenarios to caller archetypes will help determine which processes will be successful if automated, and also give some indications as to how they should be designed.
User-centric design has been the single most important element in the take-up of self-service strategies, and there are several factors that contribute towards a successful development.
Designing your ‘Persona’
The design of your ‘Persona’ – the automated personality that will guide customers through the self-service solution – is particularly important. Amtrak has experienced great success for its speech application on the basis of “Juliet”, because she appeals to callers. The ‘Persona’ that you design has a significant psychological effect on how customers perceive your speech solution, your brand and how your service meets their expectations – so it is an important tool in building confidence and increasing usage of the system.
Effective testing as part of a gradual roll-out will help to ensure that the personalised, user-centred design that has been in development for months retains the goals that it set out with. Without this you cannot be sure that the systems fulfils its original requirements.
What organisations need to bear in mind as well, is that the needs of its users may change – in fact rising levels of customer churn mean that the users themselves may in fact change. This is where expertise and planning in the early stages become vital. Sabio’s experience in developing speech applications for a number of organisations, and its commitment to vendor-independence have led it to establish some key criteria for the deployment of speech solutions that will help ensure their ongoing success and enable them to be adapted to changing customer needs.
Sabio implements open standards-based solutions to help businesses future-proof their solutions, and enable them to adapt to changes in their customers’ needs more easily without having to rip and replace. Using Voice XML as a design language, Sabio can help ensure a seamless interaction of the speech solution with other systems, including integration with web-based processes, to create a multi-channel service.
Automation has a valuable place within the contact centre, and speech self service can be leveraged to achieve significant benefits for the customer and for the business. But without a design that encourages callers to go through the automated solution, it will not be effective. The only way that these benefits can be achieved is if your customers are comfortable enough with the system to actually use it – which is why you have to develop it with those people in mind.
