CRM - December 2007 - (Page 36)

GETTING LOUD AND CLEAR integration of the speech application with the call-routing application and linkage to the business logic that supports the goals of CRM.” But don’t think you’re finished just because you’ve added a “zero-out” option. If an agent isn’t immediately available, update callers on expected hold times. Once a caller is connected to a rep, make sure the caller doesn’t have to repeat any information already provided to the automated system. “The whole integration of the back-end infrastructure [has] to make sure the agent who receives the call has access to what the caller has already done using the speech application,” says Vijai Shankar, senior product marketing manager at Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company. Robby Kilgore, creative director of professional services at Nuance Communications, stresses the importance of what he describes as letting callers “see around the corner.” “Context is king,” Kilgore says, “and that’s really about maintaining the context around the caller so that callers understand that they are, for example, on step three on a fivestep process.” Kilgore adds that context contributes to “lower call friction.” their expertise? Obtaining feedback from the agents will provide tips for improving the application. In addition, Erin Smith, senior VUI designer at Convergys, suggests getting a recording of actual calls between reps and customers—and listening to the interactions. Agents, she says, “provide great insight [into] how customers currently feel and how we can continue to [build] strong relationships within an IVR with their callers.” Dave Pelland, director of the Design Collaborative at Intervoice, recalls an instance where his firm worked with a mortgage company handling at-risk loans. Initially, the plan was to authenticate each caller and then ask what that caller wanted to do. Intervoice, however, has a process it refers to as “discovery,” which includes going to the client’s location for a handful of days, talking to executives and service reps, and listening to calls. Pelland, listening in, noticed that several callers were not account holders but instead were real estate agents calling for account holders, in order to get a payoff quote. If not for the discovery process, Pelland says, Intervoice would never have identified that kind of user, one the mortgage company never prepared for. As a result, he says, “we ended up actually changing some of the early requirements to handle this additional user.” 4. REMEMBER THAT SPEECH ≠ DTMF Thanks to standards such as VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language) and SALT (Speech Application Language Tags), speech recognition applications go beyond the boundaries of touch-tone systems, enabling customers to carry out tasks too complicated to handle within a DTMF environment. Improved vocabulary recognition also plays an important role. With directed dialogue, callers are guided with fact-based, closedended questions like “What is your ticket number?” Natural language dialogue, however, allows for more openended responses such as “I want to book a flight from Philadelphia to Chicago on January 1 and fly back to Philadelphia on January 24.” But companies are barely scratching the surface with speech recognition deployments if they rely on the same interface-design principles they used with prompts such as,“Say ‘1’ for account balance, say ‘2’ to transfer money.” “That approach doesn’t add value,” says Steven Pollock, executive vice president and cofounder of TuVox. “You’re not taking advantage of the technology.” 2. CONNECT WITH CUSTOMERS… You may think you can put yourself in your clients’ shoes, but there is no substitute for talking with your customers for first-hand insight into the customer service experience; you’ll learn valuable information like why they’re calling, what they’re trying to accomplish, likes and dislikes about the application, and what they’d like to see incorporated into the system.“If you don’t understand your own customers you’re never going to build a speech application that will meet their needs,” says Tom Hanson, senior manager of the Avaya speech self-service and IVR solutions. 3. …AND WITH REPS Customer service reps are typically the employees who interact most often with your customers. So why not leverage What have been your REASONS FOR FRUSTRATION with over-the-phone customer service? Long Hold Times Confusing Phone System Menus Agent Did Not Have Previously Entered Info Lack of After-Hours Service Most Frustrating Frustrating Transferred to Wrong Agent No Answer 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Percentage of Responses SOURCE: YANKEE GROUP RESEARCH, INC. 36 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | DECEMBER 2007 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - December 2007

CRM - December 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity SAP’s Midmarket Design A Shift in SAP’s Growth Strategy: Buy Big to Get Bigger The Buyer Is Your Owner Prime Time for Streaming TV The Word on the Floor Market Focus: Energy/Utilities: Speaking Truth to Power (Companies) The Pulse Required Reading It’s All Coming 2.0gether Power to the People Speak Up! Document Management That's a Breeze Customers Gain Traction With Off-Road Vehicles Getting Connected With Surveys Mobile Data Gets Better Reception Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - December 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.