CRM - July 2008 - (Page 42)

VUI DESIGN cooking spaghetti or baking a cake, but it doesn’t work in voice design.” And merely sidestepping pitfalls may not be enough, says Susan Hura, principal at Atlanta-based VUI consultancy SpeechUsability. “You can avoid the mistakes and still design [the VUI] improperly,” she says. THE ABCSOF IVR Behavioral Data—the quantitative statistics collected during usability testing that determine what callers are doing at different stages of the IVR system (e.g., “86 percent of callers have correct recognition at a particular prompt in the IVR,” or “There’s a 14 percent error rate at this prompt”). Differentiators—do sweat the small stuff—such as where to place the words from and to in a prompt. That can make a huge difference in a caller understanding immediately what the prompt is alluding to, or confusion leading to a possible error. Discourse Markers—the small words and phrases such as OK, all right, and sure. These words help to orient callers and keep them proceeding through the IVR system. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)—a phone technology allowing a computer to detect voice and touch tones using a normal phone call. Opinion Data—questions asked to callers during usability testing to rationalize the behavioral data collected in order to determine whether or not changes truly need to be made to the IVR. Prompts—the questions or directions posed to callers when navigating an IVR system, such as From where are you traveling? or Press 5 for more options. Speech Self-Service—the caller using her voice to proceed through the IVR system. So when the system asks her to say security, she can say security aloud and get where she needs to go. Touch-Tone Self-Service— the caller presses a button on his telephone when prompted, as opposed to verbalizing the prompt. For example, he can press 1 for billing inquiries, press 2 for an account balance, and so on. Usability Testing—the phase in which actual callers test IVR systems before general release for a company’s use. A critical point in the design phase, usability testing can catch unforeseen flaws that would otherwise wreak havoc on the IVR’s success. Voice User Interface (VUI)— the term describing the interaction with computers through a voice/speech platform in order to initiate an automated service or process. A VUI is often referred to as the heart of any speech application. PRACTICES TO DESIGN BY Experts suggest starting from Square One: Figure out the goals of the planned IVR, as well as the needs of the callers. This piece is so important to the VUI design puzzle that Pelland and Judi Halperin, a speech engineer at Basking Ridge, N.J.– based communications solution provider Avaya, both say their respective companies do a thorough presales process to ensure that all the cards are on the table before dealing with VUI design. That way, Halperin says, “from the get-go we’ve got the big stakeholders involved in both sides of the process. We optimize communication with the customer so we can start out properly and set expectations.” Pelland says that Intervoice also has a presales process, but says executives have to do more than just list their goals—they must order them by importance, a step that could change the entire speech ballgame.“When we first get out there and do requirements-gathering, we actually have the client rank their business needs,” Pelland explains. “For example, customer satisfaction, cost savings, agent time, and call completion—can you rank these? You can start to see the thought process ahead of time, and it has worked really well.” Companies should then make sure they’re employing a legitimate designer with proven experience in designing successful VUIs. “VUI should be built by someone who not only has experience in building VUI, but some understanding of the business and what companies are trying to accomplish, so they can build to that user population,” explains Elizabeth Herrell, vice president at Forrester Research. In searching for a designer, having a knowledge of linguistics in order to create grammatically correct (and genuinesounding) prompts is key, according to Blade Kotelly, chief designer at Cam42 bridge, Mass.–based information-access software company Endeca. But Kotelly, who also wrote the book The Art and Business of Speech Recognition, cautions against hiring someone solely because of linguistics skill. “Hire those that try to write scripts, people who are good at making presentations,” he says. “If your designer can’t give you a professional presentation that makes you seem wellpolished or matching the specific crowd or audience, he won’t write good prompts that will match the audience.” Having the proper designer in place can help with the next essential piece to a successful VUI design: mimicking the flow of natural conversation. This isn’t to say that designers should be incorporating slang and improper colloquialisms into speech prompts, but they should consider the little things that are sometimes overlooked during a typical conversation. Hura calls these essential tidbits discourse markers. (See “The ABCs of IVR,” above, for more terms of art.) “[Discourse markers] are the little connector words that relate one piece of the conversation to the next piece,” she explains. “You’re actually using discourse markers all the time by saying all right and OK. This is a very powerful cue, because what you’re telling me by saying OK and sure is I heard you, go ahead.” This is hardly an exhaustive compilation, but designers say that having a defined list of best practices regardless of company goals can harm the VUI design. “It’s a tough question, because it’s really hard to have an industry standard here—it changes based on the business goals, customer goals, and domain,” Pelland laments. “If we went to a banking customer and they asked us for our best practices, and then they go and tell us their number-one concern is customer satisfaction, not cost savings, it shuffles the whole deck. It’s really tough to show up and say, ‘Listen, here’s a handbook that says, “Here are your best practices, and the best way to do VUI.”’” CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JULY 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - July 2008

CRM - July 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point CRM’s a Social Animal SAP Looks to ‘Change the Game' CRM on Twitter CRM to the Max A Prescription for Satisfaction Required Reading Cover Story: Is Microsoft Winning the CRM Race? Jumping into the SaaS Pool Say What? Another Bright Idea Out of Edison A Small Biz Blossoms Biting Off the Right Amount Something for a Rainy Day Connect Re:Tooling Pint of View

CRM - July 2008

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