{"id":1617,"date":"2016-06-03T14:17:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T14:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2020-06-22T17:08:38","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T00:08:38","slug":"ivr-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/cx-strategy\/ivr-design\/","title":{"rendered":"When it\u2019s Good to be Redundant in IVR Design\u2026and Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

As early as I can remember learning anything, I was taught to strive for efficiency.\u00a0 \u201cInefficient\u201d and \u201credundant\u201d were bad words, and employees who were laid off were called \u2018redundant\u2019.\u00a0 We studied and admired Hemmingway\u2019s succinct style in school, we learned to reduce our fractions to the simplest forms in math class, and in the age of increasing awareness of the earth\u2019s environment we tried to use the least amount of paper, water, and electricity as possible.\u00a0 Two-sided printing, half-size paper towels, hybrid cars with great gas mileage, speed dialing for phones, and automated transponders for highway tolls were developed and promoted to save us time and resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"simplicityMinimalism, Plain and Simple<\/h3>\n

Even as a young adult, my peers and I fought to be as efficient as we could at work and at home.\u00a0 At my first post-college job, we competed with each other to digest our depositions into the smallest possible number of words.\u00a0 Programmers who wrote the sparest code were called the most elegant.\u00a0 When I met my husband, he was proud to own only four plates and a few forks, and he bragged that he could cook an entire meal with one pot and one big spoon.\u00a0 I even had an apartment with a murphy bed that folded up, so I could live in one room.\u00a0 Less was always more.<\/p>\n

In the early days of IVR design<\/a> \u2013 especially for speech applications – many designers, myself included, stayed true to this path and wrote and re-wrote our prompts to be as direct and simple as possible.\u00a0 Fewer words translated to a simpler user experience<\/a> that would be easier to navigate, we thought.\u00a0 We were trained on example menu prompts that were short and sweet, like \u201cchocolate, vanilla, or strawberry?\u201d and \u201cwhat size?\u201d\u00a0 Even our menus were as sparse as possible with no repeated options and nice clean branches.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t beat around the bush, we didn\u2019t stop to explain, and a good voice talent could record a trim IVR application in an hour or two.<\/p>\n

Like anything else, over time it\u2019s inevitable:\u00a0 we modify, refine, and mellow.\u00a0 With two kids, a grownup social life, and a dishwasher, it wouldn\u2019t be practical to have only four plates in our house \u2013 so we have a set of sixteen.\u00a0 And although one of our cars gets great mileage, we also have a bigger car that can hold kids, dogs, and luggage and still make it up a hill.\u00a0 Everyone I know has phone chargers upstairs, downstairs, in the car, and in the office – and many of my family members and friends have taken more of a zig-zag path to their careers than a straight line.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to see now that there\u2019s more than one way to get to the same place, and shorter is not always better.<\/p>\n

Evolution of IVR Design: Purposeful Redundancy<\/h3>\n

In the case of IVRs<\/a> and other automated systems, many designers also take a more modified approach to their user interfaces<\/a> today.\u00a0 For starters, early on we realized that recording multiple sets of numbers and letters with different intonation makes information readouts sound much more natural.\u00a0 It\u2019s inefficient, but it makes the IVR system sound better.\u00a0 Sometimes the newer approach involves \u2013 gasp \u2013 a prompt that\u2019s longer than we used to aim for.<\/p>\n

\"redundancyWe can sacrifice prompt brevity for clarity, explanation, and success.\u00a0 This is a direct result of tuning<\/a> and assessing many systems in production that were either experiencing technical issues or just weren\u2019t being used \u2013 and then seeing the positive results we got after adding a few carefully chosen words or phrases in places where the users were getting stuck.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking about the annoying legalese, warnings, and caveats we are force-fed on automated systems;\u00a0 those are still a true waste of the user\u2019s time.\u00a0 But people will not object to a longer prompt if it\u2019s clearer and helps them succeed when they\u2019re making a transaction, getting crucial information, making appointments, and so on.<\/p>\n

Designers even coach voice talents to slow down and repeat an address or phone number that the caller is likely trying to write down.\u00a0 Research and usability<\/a> studies have consistently shown that IVR callers want confirmations and the ability to hear repeats on crucial information, i.e. when there are significant consequences for incorrect recognition[i]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although it hurts to hear a caller struggle to answer an IVR prompt you wrote and thought was brilliant, data doesn\u2019t lie and real customers need to understand a question in order to answer it.\u00a0 In the same way we need to expand our dishware or housing for a changing environment, we need to adapt our automated conversations if the originals aren\u2019t working \u2013 no matter how aesthetically pleasing we thought they were.\u00a0 When asking a consumer what type of loan they are interested in, for example, following the ice cream flavor model, you could try a succinct prompt such as \u201cfixed, ARM, interest-only, buy-back, bridge, or reverse?\u201d But it\u2019s likely to cause hangups, swearing, muttering, silence, and confusion.\u00a0 A live representative would never talk to a person like that; it\u2019s just not enough information for the average consumer.<\/p>\n

\"UnderstandIn the case of automated menus, it turns out that having options in more than one place can also help users because not everyone has the same mental model when they pick up the phone or go online.\u00a0 Someone wanting to make a payment may go through a billing option looking for a mailing address, whereas another person with a question or complaint would be looking for the mailing address somewhere else.\u00a0 During the tuning of a utility<\/a>\u00a0IVR application several years ago, it was discovered that only half of the callers wanting to make a payment arrangement selected \u2018billing and payments\u2019.\u00a0 The other half expected to find payment arrangement in the \u2018something else\u2019 bucket.\u00a0 So we put it in both<\/em> places and automation went up.<\/p>\n

Are shorter and more direct prompts automatically bad?\u00a0 Should IVR menus<\/a> have every option under every branch?\u00a0 Of course not; I still like Hemmingway; I buy the paper towels with the half-sheet option, and I don\u2019t like my time wasted on the phone.\u00a0 But I also started parking farther away to get a spot in the shade, and I no longer count the number of words in my automated prompting.\u00a0 I\u2019m counting successful tasks completed instead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Learn More about User Experience<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> See AVIxD \u201cWhen to Confirm<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRepeating<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As early as I can remember learning anything, I was taught to strive for efficiency.\u00a0 \u201cInefficient\u201d and \u201credundant\u201d were bad words, and employees who were laid off were called \u2018redundant\u2019.\u00a0 We studied and admired Hemmingway\u2019s succinct style in school, we learned to reduce our fractions to the simplest forms in math class, and in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[17,20,18,19],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cx-strategy","tag-ivr","tag-ivr-design","tag-user-experience-design","tag-ux"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}