ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 - (Page 25)

TECHNOLOGY said than reaching the user’s goal. Under bad conditions, the application’s look and feel becomes feeble and uncertain — constantly asking if the course is correct, always suggesting help, permanently nagged by doubt. Under good conditions, the application’s look and feel becomes plucky and over-confident — leading the user down the “primrose path” with bravura, only to slam unsuspecting into the first error. By focusing on effective ways to move forward in the face of uncertainty, on the other hand, developers can generate a more appropriate look and feel — a competent and professional interface that performs reliably in all conditions. PREDICTABILITY IN THE LOOK AND FEEL OF IVR APPLICATIONS customer loyalty. UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS OF SPEECH sustaining an illusion of forward movement that exploits time by managing and responding to user goals. Speech recognition input is a unique and specialized human interface medium that differs considerably from the traditional media of DTMF, computer-console and other visual-mechanical interfaces. These unique attributes should be well understood when approaching telephony interface design. The Persistence Problem Visual displays have the powerful advantage of persistence. That is, once presented, data remain on the display until replaced by new data or cleared by the user. This addresses a fundamental aspect of user interfaces — memory. By remembering for the user, persistence in a visual display allows the user to: > Return to a task after interruption, > Review — by scanning back and forth — among several possible menu choices, > Eliminate or minimize the effects of time by scrolling freely between the past and the present, and > Maintain context — even when confronted with multiple tasks. When the machine presents data via spoken machine output, there is no persistence. This places the burden of remembering machine output on the user. Serial Information Speech is sequential (serial) in nature. The parallel presentation of information — in the form of menus, the data fields on a form or the GUI widgets that users take for granted in a visual interface — is lacking with audio. Rather, the user must hear and comprehend all information one element at a time. Similarly, spoken input must be supplied one command or datum at a time, requiring that the user remember and order information in a way that is more taxing than it is with visual and mechanical interfaces. This simple fact — speech interactions are time-consuming — has significant ramifications for design. The challenge is to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible. However, using spoken machine output that is too terse sometimes confuses users — leading to wasted time detecting and correcting errors. Similarly, spoken machine output that is too verbose taxes user memory and causes loss of context and distraction from the task. It is very difficult to find the best tradeoff between too much and too little machine presentation. Instead, the designer must encourage the user to construct a mental model of the task and the interface that serves it, thereby creating and End users benefit in several ways from a predictable look and feel to IVR applications. A well-designed interface tends to evoke spontaneous user-behaviors that are productive — thereby decreasing error rates and raising user satisfaction. Users also learn a given application faster. In addition, consistency between similar applications allows transfer of learning — the user is able to apply skills already learned in one application to the productive use of another. Besides the obvious advantages of streamlined development and more productive users, organizations deploying IVR applications benefit from a consistent look and feel in the design of their customerservice applications. By helping users recognize an application as a member of a family of products, style consistency often enhances corporate identity. In addition, by keeping users productive and satisfied, style consistency increases icmi’s insight Temporal Characteristics The enemy of the spoken user interface is time. This is because the persistence problem is only overcome by frequent data presentation by the machine. Frequent presentation in turn increases the memory burden on the user. In addition to the lengthy amount of time required by a spoken interface, certain short-term rhythmic effects dominate human speech. These short-term timing problems lead to conflicts, user anxiety and social considerations that cause frequent interaction breakdown. www.icmi.com | APRIL 2008 25 http://www.icmi.com

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ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 Operations: Small Call Centers, Big Potential Ad Index Contents Editor's Page Contact Center Spotlight People: Assessment Tools Recommended Reading Technology: Speech Recognition Special Feature: Best of Show Strategy: Service-to-Sales Success Expert's Angle - High Volume, High Stakes: A Better Strategy for Hiring Experts Angle - Secrets of Recruiting Success/Job Brands: Changing Applicant Reactions to Your Openings Experts Angle - Speech Analytics: Uncovering the Voice of the Customer

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008

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