CP Wire

You get only one shot at making a good first impression. In an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR), such an impression is formed by callers and conveyed by Voice User Interface (VUI) designers with the application's opening prompt.

When writing your system's opening prompt, keep the following three basic VUI guidelines in mind – be brief, be concise and be polite.

Be brief - Belabored, verbose opening prompts confirm the worst stereotype of the dumb, overbearing IVR system.

Be concise -Each word in your opening prompt needs to be absolutely indispensable. If you can get rid of a word without losing meaning or effectiveness, do it.

Be polite - A system that’s respectful of callers is a system that’s attentive to caller needs and, therefore, a system that will help callers successfully accomplish their task.

Following are 10 tips that can help you craft an effective opening prompt.

1. Drop "Welcome to..."
Simply have your application announce your company's name, preceded or followed by an audio icon, and then followed by your company's tag line.

2. Drop "Thank you for calling..."
Set your application apart with the simple opening described above and save two seconds of prompt time.

3. Use an audio icon
An audio icon is not only an effective way of signaling to callers they are interacting with an automated system, but also a good way of communicating to callers that the system has been designed and crafted with care. The implication is the company cares about its customers.

4. Have the system refer to itself as "I"
Studies have shown callers like to have the system refer to itself with the personal "I" rather than the impersonal "system."

5. Drop "You can interrupt me at any time"
Callers simply do not register the instruction, especially when placed at the opening prompt.

6. Drop "For English…"
If your application starts off speaking in English, have it pause 1.5 or 2.0 seconds after the language instructions for different languages have completed and then proceed with the rest of the prompt in English.

7. Establish that callers can use speech
If your application is speech enabled, make sure your opening prompt conveys that upfront. Have the first interaction ask callers to answer a yes/no question by explicitly saying, "you can say 'yes' or 'no.'"

8. Don't mention the Web site upfront
Chances are good people calling you not only already know you have a Web site, but they found your phone number on the Web site. Don't risk insulting your callers' intelligence or making them feel you really don't want to interact with them by phone. If you mention the Web site, try to mention a specific page where they can find help and mention it at moments where you have determined the help they are seeking could be obtained via the Web. A good place to mention the Web site is at the closing of the call.

9. Postpone the call-recording disclaimer
If you are recording interactions between callers and live agents only, not the automated part of calls, then delay the obligatory message, "this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" to just before the call is being transferred to a live agent. Such disclaimers not only lengthen the opening prompt, but have come to be taken as a cue that the caller is about to be transferred to a live agent and may needlessly frustrate callers when no such transfer follows.

10. Turn off your "barge in"
If you are speech-enabling your voice site, make sure you turn the "barge-in" on your application off. Background noise of a caller's inadvertent speech utterance may trip the opening prompt, resulting in a no-match in the first few seconds of the interaction. The only time you should turn barge-in on at the opening prompt is if the majority of your callers are frequent callers who know exactly what to say or push and may (and will) be irritated if they are forced to listen to the opening prompt, no matter how brief.

By Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, who heads the Partnerships and Strategic Alliances program at Angel.com. He has over 15 years’ experience in the Speech and Natural Language Processing industry and has written extensively on Voice User Interface design and Natural Language Processing.


Issue 140: April 16, 2008
This Issue Sponsored by Salesforce.com		Read the online edition of the latest issue.


10 Tips for an Effective IVR Opening Prompt
You get only one shot at making a good first impression. In an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR), such an impression is formed by callers and conveyed by Voice User Interface (VUI) designers with the application's opening prompt. When writing your system's opening prompt, keep the following three basic VUI guidelines in mind – be brief, be concise and be polite. Be brief - Belabored, verbose opening prompts confirm the worst stereotype of the dumb, overbearing IVR system. Be concise -Each word in your opening prompt needs to be absolutely indispensable. If you can get rid of a word without losing meaning or effectiveness, do it. Be polite - A system that’s respectful of callers is a system that’s attentive to caller needs and, therefore, a system that will help callers successfully accomplish their task. Following are 10 tips that can help you craft an effective opening prompt. 1. Drop "Welcome to..." Simply have your application announce your company's name, preceded or followed by an audio icon, and then followed by your company's tag line. 2. Drop "Thank you for calling..." Set your application apart with the simple opening described above and save two seconds of prompt time. 3. Use an audio icon An audio icon is not only an effective way of signaling to callers they are interacting with an automated system, but also a good way of communicating to callers that the system has been designed and crafted with care. The implication is the company cares about its customers. 4. Have the system refer to itself as "I" Studies have shown callers like to have the system refer to itself with the personal "I" rather than the impersonal "system." 5. Drop "You can interrupt me at any time" Callers simply do not register the instruction, especially when placed at the opening prompt. 6. Drop "For English…" If your application starts off speaking in English, have it pause 1.5 or 2.0 seconds after the language instructions for different languages have completed and then proceed with the rest of the prompt in English. 7. Establish that callers can use speech If your application is speech enabled, make sure your opening prompt conveys that upfront. Have the first interaction ask callers to answer a yes/no question by explicitly saying, "you can say 'yes' or 'no.'" 8. Don't mention the Web site upfront Chances are good people calling you not only already know you have a Web site, but they found your phone number on the Web site. Don't risk insulting your callers' intelligence or making them feel you really don't want to interact with them by phone. If you mention the Web site, try to mention a specific page where they can find help and mention it at moments where you have determined the help they are seeking could be obtained via the Web. A good place to mention the Web site is at the closing of the call. 9. Postpone the call-recording disclaimer If you are recording interactions between callers and live agents only, not the automated part of calls, then delay the obligatory message, "this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" to just before the call is being transferred to a live agent. Such disclaimers not only lengthen the opening prompt, but have come to be taken as a cue that the caller is about to be transferred to a live agent and may needlessly frustrate callers when no such transfer follows. 10. Turn off your "barge in" If you are speech-enabling your voice site, make sure you turn the "barge-in" on your application off. Background noise of a caller's inadvertent speech utterance may trip the opening prompt, resulting in a no-match in the first few seconds of the interaction. The only time you should turn barge-in on at the opening prompt is if the majority of your callers are frequent callers who know exactly what to say or push and may (and will) be irritated if they are forced to listen to the opening prompt, no matter how brief. By Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, who heads the Partnerships and Strategic Alliances program at Angel.com. He has over 15 years’ experience in the Speech and Natural Language Processing industry and has written extensively on Voice User Interface design and Natural Language Processing.

Complimentary Webcasts You Won't Want to Miss
April 18, 1:00 Eastern: Keeping Your Customers: Predicting Customer Churn with Interaction Analytics. Presented by NICE. This webcast highlights the experiences of Orange, a major telecommunications provider, in using interaction analytics to reduce customer churn and deliver other benefits to their operation. April 22, 1:00 Eastern: First Call Resolution Strategies for the Contact Center. Presented by Aspect. Learn why first call resolution is so important and how improving customer-facing business processes with complete visibility and control will contribute to your bottom line. April 24, 1:00 Eastern: Building Recognition in the Enterprise. Presented by Calabrio. It is critical for companies who have made the commitment to build an effective customer centric environment to align the various touch points in their organization correctly so that they can effectively implement such an initiative. Join Ken Landoline as he discusses steps needed to achieve these goals. April 29, 1:00 Eastern: Voice Self-Service Solutions, At-Home Agents, Optimal Call Routing: Getting the Best Results From Your New VoIP Infrastructure. Presented by Envox. By taking advantage of the power of VoIP, you can re-architect business processes to slash costs and improve customer service. We’ll take a look at some of the key applications and changes that you will want to make as part of such a transition, particularly in self-service, the utilization of home agents, and call routing. May 1, 1:00 Eastern: Your Ultimate Competitive Weapon: The Combination of Contact Center Information and Real Time Enterprise Data. Presented by Informiam. This webcast will show you how to identify the communities within your business that could use real-time contact center intelligence and how to manage unexpected events that could potentially derail your initiatives.

News and Commentary
These Days, Choice Abounds for Cable, Phone, Internet Comcast, for instance, is focused on improving what hasn't always been a stellar customer service reputation. A program called E-care includes an improved customer service call center and a Web site where customers can exchange instant messages. Robots Gearing Up for Service Industry Jobs Dealing with humans is a very complex task. It will take time to perfect robots capable of understanding human emotions well enough to please people in service roles, says Dr. Burdick. Five Fundamentals of Integrated Marketing Customer-focused marketing requires relevant communications, interactions and content, regardless of channel and customer interaction point. That's a tall order and requires an incredibly strong leader. No Shoes, No Shirt, No ID Card, No Service Every private school, office, call center, warehouse, agency or government building should have ID cards for their employees, magnetic readers to validate the ID cards and a method of identifying and regulating visitors. Call Center Helps Disabled Work from Home Part of a new "homesourcing" program run by Mainstream Living, an Iowa nonprofit social service agency, that has enabled disabled people work at home in jobs that fit their specific disability. Can Your Contact Center Handle a Disaster? For many businesses, ensuring the continuity of contact center operations is an important component of disaster recovery. This whitepaper explains the testing and monitoring best practices that can help ensure the continuous availability of contact center operations during any type of business interruption. Analytics-driven Workforce Optimization: An Essential Approach to Enterprise Find out more about the analytics in the contact center, and how analytics forms part of an advanced workforce optimization solution that can impact areas beyond the contact center.

Smart Quote
"Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars." -- Unknown

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