Effective IVR and Customer Experience Routing Design

Rebecca OwensSolution Consultant

Elena PueyoStrategic Business Consultant

The Future is Constant Change

Effective IVR

Is IVR too old school?

IVR

Is IVR dying?

Reports of IVRdeath have been greatly exaggerated

Use of IVR is evolving within an explosion of channels

Back Office

Social

Website

eMail

Messaging

Chat Video

Mobile App

VOLUME OF SERVICE INTERACTIONSHANDLED

Customer engagement maturity model

Voiceself-service

Visual IVRWeb self-service

ChatSMSMicroApps

Multi-modalMessaging as service

Text AnalyticsNatural Language

Intelligent AgentArtificial intelligence

Internet of ThingsSelf-healing systems

ONE ENGINE, MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS / PERSONAS

Interactions will increase

IVR remains critically important

Interaction Complexity

Inte

ract

ion

Co

un

t

Need an Agent

Self-Service Voice Agents Handle Complexity

Social

Website

eMail

Messaging

Chat

Mobile App

AgentIVRVoice

Agent

IVR is not dying. IVR is evolving.

Context enables Customer Experience

Intelligent IVR(DTMF or Speech)

Are you calling about…?

DTMF

Pop

Speech Recognition

Hello!

Tell me why you’re calling.

Customer Journey(DTMF or Speech)

Can I help you finish that web form?

Good News!

Customers really don’t want to talk to you!

Customers often prefer IVR self-service

What’s my balance?

Is my flight on time?

Refill my prescription

Well designed IVR improves efficiency

and customer experience

Keep the Human Factor in Mind

I don’t want to repeat myself

I don’t want to be transferred

Respect my time, no long waits

Resolve my issue the first time I contact you

Typical IVR Goals

• ID/Authenticate callers

• Provide reasonable self-service options

• Route to skilled agent with good screen pop

One Dozen IVR Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

IVR Tips The Essentials

If you want them to use it, make it easy.

1. Place menu options in decreasing order of call volume

• Most common call reason should be option 1

• Monitor menu peg-counts, adjust menu order

IVR Tips The Essentials

2. No more than “4 options wide and 3 deep”

• Limits of caller patience and tolerance

• Get lost if too many options, forget choices

• Will start pressing “0” to get to agent

3. Description first, followed press “x” option

• “For customer service, press 3”

1 2abc

3def

4ghi

5jkl

6mno

7pqrs

8tuv

9wxyz

IVR Tips The Essentials

4. Be concise, avoid insider jargon

• Avoid: “For parts replacements, replacement manuals, SmartParts, or WellParts programs, press 3 now.”

5. Caller information should “follow” through transfers

• Agents need proper screen pop of all information

You want my account number AGAIN?

IVR Tips The Essentials

6. Text to Speech versus Recorded Prompts

• Use TTS only for dynamic prompts that cannot be pre-recorded

• Recorded prompts always sound better

7. Sweat the concatenation and prosody “pitch” of prompts – both TTS and recorded

• Makes speech “natural”

• Consider phone number read back, digits with rising, flat and falling pitch

The phone number is 1 - 8 5 5 - 5 0 6 – 2 3 1 6

One Dozen IVR Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

IVR Tips The Enhanced

8. Offer Call Back in the IVR

Offer callers immediate or scheduled call back

• Avoid having to wait on the phone for an agent

• Call back routed to right-skilled agent

• Agent gets full context popped to screen

IVR Tips The Enhanced

9. Persona - every IVR has a persona, intentional or not

• Reflect your brand through voice talent, prompts and in-queue music

• Audition voice talent to reflect your brand

• Prompts “coach” should work with voice talent

Who writes your prompts?

Who writes your prompts?

Voice talent matters!

• Prompts actually touch callers

• Use professional talent and professional studio

Redesign of DTMF prompts is typically of more value than adding speech recognition.

Dialog design is art

• Spoken language is not written language

• Intonation, timing, and emotion

Worst Prompts - Top Offenders

Worst. Prompt. Ever.

IVR Tips The Enhanced

10. Use Speech Recognition? Yes and No.

Sometimes Yes

• Complex info better spoken (Address capture, stock quotes, alpha-numerics…)

• Number of “routing targets” is very large (60+) and fairly evenly distributed

Sometimes No

• Straightforward menus

• Number of “routing targets” is not too large (up to 60) and concentrated (top 10 drive 80% of calls)

• Background noise

DTMF and Speech Recognition

Touch Tone DTMF

Directed Dialog Speech

Natural Language Speech

For A, press 1… for B, press 2

Numeric entries

Alphas are awkward

Lowest cost

Do you want A, B, C or other?

Simple spoken responses

Spoken addresses, alpha#

Needs DTMF “backup”

Medium cost

How may I help you?

Open ended spoken responses

Still needs Directed Dialog and DTMF “backup”

Highest cost

One Dozen IVR Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

IVR Tips The Epic

11. Intelligent IVR

• Use caller context to simplify caller experience

• Impress your callers

• Often of more value than natural language speech recognition

IVR Tips The Epic

Intelligent IVRuses caller context

“Are you calling about your recent stop service request?

Lead with Yes/No Question

Proactive, Personal

Use Context of Customer Journey

Natural Language IVR

“Please use a short phrase to tell me what you’re calling about.”

No context

Reactive, Impersonal

No Knowledge of Customer

Intelligent IVR Intercept The Epic

Greeting

ID Caller (explicitly or

implicitly)

Yes/No Question

(context + rules)

DTMF or Natural

Language

Self-Service Module

Self-Service Module

Self-Service Module

Are you calling about <topic>? Yes/No

• Lead with context, fall back on menu

• Direct route to self-service or agent

• Base route on business valueTransfers

(routing & screen-pop)

CONTACTCENTER

Yes

No

Context vs Customer Profiling

Why not just use CRM customer profiling instead of recent context?

65 years old, Q4 1948Born and raised in the UKMarried (more than once)Two kidsLives in a castleNot the smartest of the family

65 years old, Q4 1948Born and raised in the UKMarried (more than once)Two kidsLives in a castleNot the smartest of the family

Intelligent IVR would treat these two differently, per their recent context.

Intelligent IVR Intercept The Epic

12. Reporting, analyze IVR performance, tune IVR

Peg Count Menu 36Pressed 1: 15%Pressed 2: 40%Pressed 3: 20%Pressed 0 Agent: 25%

• Better order: 2, 3, 1

• High opt-out rate: 25%

What can be tuned?

Why is this Epic?

Epic IVR Reporting – go OmniChannel

Outbound Voice

Email, Mail

Web Activity

SMS, Social

IVR Purpose of Call1

Intelligent IVRWelcome Mr. Smith. Are you calling about the status of your recent claim?

Conversation Manager

3

4

5

Peg Count Menu 36Pressed 1: 15%Pressed 2: 40%Pressed 3: 20%Pressed 0 Agent: 25%

2

IVR Maturity Levels

1. Black Box IVRIn/Out counts only

2. Visible IVR Menu Peg Counts, Exit Points

3. Intelligent IVRAre you calling about…?

4. Path Analytics IVR

5. Omni-Channel Customer Journey Lifecycle Across Channels

1

2

3

4

5

Yes

No

Self-Service End Point

Transfer to Agent

Exit Point 42Eligibility

Customer Experience Routing

Routing Key Objectives

Deliver the right customer experience

Optimally use your available resources and their skills

Deliver on business objectives and operate within your budget

Routing Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

Move Away from Queue – based Routing

Queues are buckets of work that supporttargeting, prioritization and reporting

Challenges of Queue-Based Routing

Sales Voice English Queue

Sales Voice Spanish Queue

Sales Voice French Queue

Sales Email English Queue

Sales Email Spanish Queue

Sales Email French Queue

Interactions Agents

Inbound Voice Queues

Inbound Email Queues

Siloed Prioritization = Missed Opportunities,Low Occupancy and Utilization

Silos of Queues, Channels, Opportunities and People

Challenges of Queue-Based RoutingInteractions Agents

Queue 1- Gold

Queue 2 - Silver

Queue 3- Regular

Queue 4 - Sales

Queue 5 - Service

Queue 6 - Billing

Queue 7 - Complains

Low PersonalizationHigh Customer EffortHigh Transfer Rates

Limited Segmentation of Customers, Workload and Resources

Challenges of Queue-Based RoutingInteractions Agents

Queue 1

Queue 2

Queue 3

Queue 4

Queue 5

Queue 6

Queue 7

Limited Usability of Data for Continuous Improvement

Queue CentricNo Journey Visibility

No Linkage to Business Outcomes

Queues are Not Skills. Skills are Not Queues.

SalesQueue

ServiceQueue

SKILLS

How Are They Different?

Queue-Based Routing

Interactions Targeted to Queues

Next Available

Move People to the Work

Siloed Management

Low Context for Personalization

Customer Experience Routing

Interactions Targeted to Resources

Best Available

Direct the Work to the People

Universal Management

High Context for Personalization

What is Customer Experience Routing?

CX Routing manages customer journeys by prioritizing and matching the Right Interaction to the Right Resource at the Right Time

Anatomy of a CX Routing

phone

emailchat

social

mobile

AgentCustomer

Attached Data are what you know about a

specific interaction, and can be added and

updated throughout the life of the

interaction.

Skills are what you know about an agent.

Skills should only be changed as agents

acquire new job functions, training, or

capabilities, not to redirect traffic.

Routing prioritizes and matches the right interaction with the right resource at the right

time. It looks at Data and Skills to determine the optimal treatment and route point.

Redirecting traffic should be done through Routing, not by ad hoc Skill changes.

Business Rules/Parameters enable frequent or ongoing Routing changes.

Mobile Self-Service

Chat-bot

H

Systems

Best practices in defining CX Routing

Skills Based Routing Decision

Attached Data per Interaction What you know about an interaction

Updated during the life of an interaction

Identify

Who is it?What do they want?

•Account #, ANI, DNIS…•History, profile, value

1

Segment

How to treat customer?

•Valuable customer?•What have they done

recently?•Next best action

2

Objective

What to achieve?

•Any other conversation going on?

•Any activities to be completed?

3

Route Interaction

Route to best agent

•Check agent states, profiles (skills + proficiencies)

•Push to desktop with context

4

Let the System Do The WorkCX Routing based on Skills with Dynamic Target Expansion across Virtual Resource

Pool:

1. POWERFUL – Find best available Frontline agent:

Skills: {Eng>9, French=0, Phone>9, Chat>9, ProductX>9, Empathy>6, Frontline=True}.

2. SIMPLE – Find any suitably skilled available Frontline agent:

Skills: {Eng>9, Phone>6, Chat>6, ProductX>6, Frontline=True}.

3. DYNAMIC – Find any available suitably skilled agent across entire virtual pool (based on Presence and/or Schedule):

(If Status=Ready/Schedule=Frontline), Skills: {Eng>9, Phone>6, Chat>6, ProductX>3} .

4. DEFAULT ROUTING – All hands on deck and/or special messaging.

ENGLISH BACK-OFFICE TEAM

FRENCH BACK-OFFICE TEAM

ENGLISH FRONTLINE TEAM

FRENCH FRONTLINE TEAM

Mapping Out a Customer Service Strategy

• What personalized CXs do we want to deliver but struggle with today?

• What specialized skills do our agents need to deliver these experiences?

• What are the success metrics for CX and business outcomes?

PowerfulCustomer

Experiences

• What’s working well today?

• What do we want to migrate and optimize (‘Lift and Shift’)?

• What are the success metrics and reporting we want to keep?

Business as Usual

• Under what conditions are we willing to borrow/lend resources?

• What monitoring and alerting do we need?

• What changes should be triggered automatically vs. manually?

Planning for the

Unexpected

• Do we need to change our people organizations at all?

• What crazy work do we do because of our current limitations?

• Is it designed from the customer or company perspective?

Stop the Madness

Powerful(Tier 1)

Simple(Tier 2)

Dynamic(Tier 3)

Eliminated

Routing Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

Leverage a Single Routing Engine with a Universal Queue

RoutingWFM

Reporting

CustomerInteractions

Social

Chat

Email

Back Office

Universal Queue• Customer Intent

• Resource Attributes

• Business Value

• Dynamic SLA Mgmt

Right Resource. Right Time.

Easy to load balance

Blending and prioritization across channels

Central administration for resources and rules

Single source of truth

Inbound Voice

Outbound Voice

Mobile Self-Service

H

Systems

Chat-bot

Back Office Activity Routing

The challenge of managing work items

• There is limited management information available to manage the SLA of business processes work items and improve workforce efficiency

• Assignment & distribution of work items is often done manually, and the employees decide what they work on and when

• Multiple systems & processes generate different type of work-items, which requires different skills to manage.

INEFFICIENCYINVISIBLE

Work is generated in multiple systems

Channels used to Submit a request

Web form directly feeds into CRM/BPM

Email send to distribution group

A dispatcher reads email (Outlook) and registers Service Request

Voice traffic served trough telephony

Contact Center agent to answer the incoming call and register ServideRequest

Web form directly feeds into CRM/BPM

“I would like to postpone the Payment of my bill.”

“Last bill is too high, I want my money back.”

“My address changed.”

Customers Requests are recordedin multiple systems

BPM / CRM

Today the work is pulled from different workbins

Customers TRADICIONAL ORGANIZATION

Complaint team

Billing exceptions

Front Office

CRM / BPM / XLS .. “I would like to postpone the

Payment of my bill.”

“Last bill is too high, I want my money back.”

“My address changed.”

Tomorrow, work is pushed to optimal advisor

Customers CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE FOCUSED ORGANIZATION

CRM / BPM / XLS .. “I would like to postpone the

Payment of my bill.”

“Last bill is too high, I want my money back.”

“My address changed.”

Where does back office advisor go?

Content search Handling customer queries Training Reminders

Pulling work Outbound Voice Misrouted tasks

Time between tasks

10 – 20 % gain

Where does back office supervisors go?

Work assignment / re-assignment Meetings and Change MgtTraffic management Coaching & QM

Manual reporting / scheduling Escalation management

30 – 60 % gain

Service Level Optimization

Is 80% in 20 seconds actually an “Industry Standard?”

What is this based on? • In early contact centers, time before a customer hung up,

assuming no answer? • Time that three or four rings take? • Data published in an ACD system manual?

Vocalabs National Customer Service Survey: Banking

What do customers really expect?

• Vocalabs’ survey banks’ customers found that customers are willing to wait up to 2-3 minutes. Customer satisfaction was not significantly impacted until wait times exceeded 4-5 minutes.

• 85% or more of most companies’ customers found the wait time reasonable

• Large APAC company found no correlation between wait times of <6 min and NPS or Resolution

Relax your Service Levels

What if you could meet service levels for 99% of your interactions?

1 min 2 min 3 min 4 min 5 min

Customers begin finding wait times

unacceptableCustomers finding wait

times unacceptable double

Nearly all customers find wait times unacceptable

Time

% Calls Answered

Use this time to route to best agent, boost NPS, save $$

Best NPS Worst NPS

Measure NPS per transaction

Prioritise clients that should still be answered immediately

Based on customer research at a major US bank

Relax your Service Levels

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 390 420 450 480 510 540 570 600

NP

S Sc

ore

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 390 420 450 480 510 540 570 600

NP

S Sc

ore

Time spent waiting

-100

-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 390 420 450 480 510 540 570 600

NP

S Sc

ore

General Inquiry Payment Extension High Churn Product

Based on APAC Genesys Customer

Leverage Customer Segmentation for routing

High Value

• Proactively engage to sell

Elite

• Proactively engage to sell

• Dedicated Personal Rep

Mass Market

• Manage cost of sale

• Sell reactively

Low Value and Costly

• Manage cost

• Emancipate

Cu

sto

mer

Val

ue

Customer Cost

Hig

h

HighLow

Low

Many companies do this wellMany companies miss this.Guard against churn.

Engage your most valuable

customers

Deflect your most costly customers.

Routing Tips

The Essentials

The Enhanced

The Epic

Predictive Matching

Are you leveraging data analytics and driving business outcomes to pick the most qualified agent?

YourCustomer

MostQualifiedAgent

SkillsBasedRouting

Predictive Matching applied to routing

Leverage data and adaptive learningto pick the most qualified agent and deliver optimal business outcomes

How does it work?

Improves business outcomes by routing work to the employee predicted to achieve optimal results

ActivitiesPredicted Outcomes

Business RulesRouting

EngagementMost Qualified

Agent

Actionschat Data +

Context

Score: 10

How does it work?

ADAPTIVE LEARNING

A B

C D

The intelligent System Knows not just of it’s own decisions, but ones prior, concurrent or in process

Decision to move A to B know about C & D

Decision to move C to D knows A & B

Enhance routing with Artificial Intelligence

Chatbot / Virtual AssistantA computer program that runs automated tasks and can be designed to simulate conversation with human users

Enhance routing with Artificial Intelligence

Go beyond and introduce Blended A.I. / Kate

A hybrid execution that seamlessly blends automation and machine learning with real agents to better handle customer inquiries.

Connected Channels

Designed to deliver an intuitive, automated experience for all Genesys channels by engaging your customers in natural conversations using voice, text or microapps

Personalized Self-Service

Provides the quickest way to give customers the answer they need. Kate is backed with knowledge management and natural language understanding to deliver the right answers to customers and to agents.

Smarter Agent ExperiencesAssistance of human agents with suggestions on how to respond to the customer, provides insight into the customer based on sentiment analysis and previous customer interactions.

Questions? Thank you!

Rebecca OwensSolution Consultant

Elena PueyoStrategic Business Consultant