{"id":2217,"date":"2017-10-02T19:42:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T19:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/?p=2217"},"modified":"2020-11-19T10:14:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T18:14:24","slug":"customer-experience-cx-dominant-path-analysis-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ptpinc.com\/staging\/cx-strategy\/customer-experience-cx-dominant-path-analysis-part\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Experience (CX) and Dominant Path Analysis – Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first article on Dominant Path Analysis, in a multi-part series, where we take a deeper dive into the process of improving the customer experience in the contact center through the analysis of Interactive Voice Response flows.<\/em><\/p>\n

Customer Experience (CX) has become the competitive differentiator in today\u2019s business world. In recent surveys, it\u2019s shown that good CX is a bigger differentiator than price, product or convenience. This is due in large part because of commodity hardware and software, which eliminates price point as a competitive advantage.<\/p>\n

The Interactive Voice Response<\/strong> (IVR) world is somewhat different, though. In many cases, an IVR solution is complex and costly. Historically, the goal of most IVR\u2019s was\/is to eliminate people calling into the contact center and taking up the time of customer service agents, and, for many customers, this is perceived as a negative.<\/p>\n

To overcome this negative perception many companies have begun serious reviews of their IVR solutions. They seek to understand the caller experience in order to so that they can refine the process and create an improved CX experience, and ultimately customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty.<\/p>\n

A Top-Down Dive Into Your IVR<\/h2>\n

The common approach to this review is to take a top down dive into the IVR.  This is referred to as Dominant Path Analysis<\/strong>. Figure 1<\/em> shows a diagram of a simple IVR.  In technical terms this is referred to as a tree.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IVR
FIGURE 1: Diagram of a simple Interactive Voice Response (IVR) tree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this example, the IVR team at First Federal Bank might have an assumption about which path is the most frequently used, and thus should be optimized first.  The important thing at this point is to look at the data to understand what is really happening.<\/p>\n

Typically this is done by analyzing  \u201cbread-crumbs\u201d<\/strong> (textual representations of the path that callers take through the IVR), here are two examples:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

welcome_pp, main_menu_d, checking_d,<\/pre>\n
welcome_pp, main_menu_d, cardnumber_d<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
There are four obstacles to doing this in many organizations:<\/p>\n