Spoken Communications

Social Customer Service in Action

At the GartnerCRM summit, an enlightening session using real customer case studies and data to show the trends and techniques for winning customer service on social media

[cross-posted at www.heidi-miller.com]

Jenny Sussin, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner with a primary focus on social for CRM, gave this informative session on not only what is happening in terms of social customer management but also how to start initiatives and what to expect when you do. A brief summary of her presentation follows, with some of my own editorial comments thrown in.

Approaching Social

Considering that 340 million Tweets are exchanged every day and that a company like Disney gets as many as 111,000 mentions in one day, it might not be possible to read and respond to every social media mention. However, keep in mind that consumers tend to expect fairly immediate responses from social engagement; some expect responses within a few minutes, and 25% expect a response within 24 hours.

Quantifying the value

So what is the value? It's important to realize that a lot of these interactions will be handled offline. And other results are harder to quantify. For example, a positive interaction by Sussin on Facebook with Eggo waffles may not be tied to a specific increase in sales, but several of her friends noted they hadn't had waffles in a while and would be toasting up more Eggos this week!

However, Sussin reports that 75% of social media projects that don't show a definitive result will be cut off this year. And we can measure elements such as call deflection or speed of response. For example, one retailer quantified their savings in terms of call deflection, calculating that they saved $8 million by responding on social media rather than answering calls in their call center. Another company, Husqvarna, experienced a 24% decrease in call volume due to their social media engagement. Another organization, Odeon, experienced a 61% reduction in negative sentiment in one year with a social customer relationship strategy.

Social Customer Service guidelines

• Keep in mind that unlike other customer service, this is public. Don't ask participants to post private personal information publicly.
• Never delete a post. The community will notice and punish you.
• It's OK not to respond to every comment or post.
• Be strategic in dealing with negative sentiment. Remember the Applebee's kerfuffle? The error was in the organization posting the response as a comment in the long thread, which got buried. Make sure key information is in a new post.
• Don't use templated responses. While this works great in private email or chat, keep in mind that followers can see everything you post. A string of copy-and-pasted boilerplate responses makes the organization look robotic and disinegnuous.

How do we implement?

Sussin shared three key initiatives:

1. Peer-to-peer communities These are communities that replace technical support with fans and other users. Keep in mind that 75%-90% of users will be lurkers and never interact actively in any way: no Likes, no posts, no comments, nothing. Another segment, usually 9%-23%, might engage minimally with a Like or a comment but will not post original content. These are the users to target for more active engagement. And in any community, 1%-2% of users will create the original content; these are the super users. Reward them with badges and other social capital.
2. Social media engagement for customer service Tips for social customer service include avoiding automation, identifying your internal subject matter experts, developing an escalation policy, establishing workflow and creating customized agent desktops to facilitate tracking and analysis. Get started by observing analytics dashboards and determining the proper workload by agent. Identify trending issues and develop FAQs. Determine best practices of high performing agents.
3. Enterprise social networks These are real-time, employee-to-employee collaboration tools, such as Chatter or Yammer. These are best used for a case or a specific issue and are linear and historical. Make sure that the information and case records are searchable for future use.

How to get started

On Monday Find out what your organization is already doing for social. Decide what customer service business value you seek to extract from social: without a goal, you will not be able to measure success or direct your new initiative.

In 90 days Decide who leads the initiative and monitor brand-related feeds to budget resources for social customer service.

In 12 months Select your technology partner and create a standard of service document.

Customer service vs. customer experience: what's the difference?

What is the difference between customer service and the customer experience, and why does it matter?

An interesting discussion on the LinkedIn Customer Experience Professionals group centers around the distinction between two terms all too often used interchangeably: "customer service" and "customer experience." What is the difference between the two? And more importantly, why does either one matter?

While some group members weighed in to say that there is no difference or that one is a subset of the other, I put together a quick summary of some of the thoughts on the topic to see how customer service experts tend to view the differentiation:

Point of service vs. sum total of experience

For a less subjective definition, I turned to Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines "customer service" as the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase, while "customer experience" is  defined as the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods and services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier.

From that definition alone, the point/line analogy is an accurate one. Customer service is limited to specific, measurable sale-related instances, while the customer experience is, well, everything the customer has ever experienced, believed, thought, loved or hated about the brand. By these definitions, customer service is indeed related to transactions and customer experience is related to transactions and a lot more, over time.

And from the differentiation proposed by various experts, those definitions are fairly accurate.  Perhaps the most informative comment was by Ian Williams, who pointed out two key differences from a marketing point of view as well as a timeline point of view:

 

Customer Service is part of Customer Experience. From a marketing perspective Customer Experience covers all 7Ps (product, price, distribution, promotion, people, physical evidence & process) whereas Customer Service only covers the last 3Ps above.

The other discernible difference is time. CS focuses predominantly on one particular point in time, whereas CE focuses on the customer lifetime. CE can, of course, focus on a particular point in time too, whereas CS almost certainly isn't focused on the lifetime.

Customer experience: depth and breadth of experience

When we talk about the sum total of all experiences that a customer has feeding into the customer experience, we are talking about a myriad of experiences over time. And those experiences might not relate to customer service, as Williams has pointed out. They might relate to promotion or distribution, such as the impression that a commercial, billboard or charity sponsorship made on a customer. They might include meeting a CEO at a golf tournament, a shared story from a friend or a piece they read in the New York Times rating customer service for banks in which no brands were mentioned at all.

No transaction is involved, but those passive or indirect experiences do influence the overall customer experience.

Have you heard the story of the people who gave Nordstrom's the highest marks in customer service, even though they had no Nordstrom's store within hundreds of miles and indeed had never had any experience with Nordstrom's at all? The reputational gossip they heard about the level of customer service was part of their customer experience, even though they were never actually customers.

So I posit that the customer service/customer experience definition looks something like this, with the number and volume of circles constantly growing and shrinking over time:

In short, customer service is one element of the customer experience, which encompasses the sum total of a customer's active and passive interaction with a brand over time.

What do you think? Would you change or alter this definition? Do you use these two terms interchangeably?

 

Seven key areas to address for work-from-home agent success

What you need to know to implement virtual, work-from-home agents successfully

Over the past five years, the work-from-home or "virtual" agent model has grown in popularity. According to IT consulting giant ICD, nearly 310,000 home-based agents will be working in the U.S. by 2013, up from 112,000 in 2007. And with productivity among home agents proven to be higher than brick-and-mortar agents, more and more contact centers are adopting the practice.

While most of the fears about productivity and security among virtual agents have proven unfounded, it is true that managing a virtual team requires different communication mechanisms and practices. Before building a virtual team, be sure to consider the unique requirements of the following seven areas:

1. Recruiting

While many agent skills overlap from the brick-and-mortar model, keep in mind that recruiting for a virtual workforce is not exactly the same as for a brick-and-mortar call center. One key difference is that industry experience outweighs call center experience in the recruiting process. And the reason is simple: with the background of the call center stripped away, what matters most is the level of agent knowledge and expertise. Also, highly motivated and self-starting candidates work best in the virtual sphere.

Best practices:

• Recruit for technical skills
• Test for desired attributes
• Engage virtual agent recruiting firms

2. Onboarding

Because believe it or not, talented virtual agents actually require less direct supervision and monitoring than brick-and-mortar agents, it's essential that the onboarding and login procedures be crisp, clear and simple. Most virtual agents work well under pay for performance metrics, and they are eager to begin their shifts on time. Create clear guidelines, streamlined and foolproof login procedures, and clear procedures for disaster recovery or equipment failure. State and reiterate the best ways to reach technical support.

Best practices:

• Use pay for performance model
• Streamline or automate logins
• Create clear DR processes
• Offer 24/7 technical support

3. Training

Training for virtual agents can be accomplished just as easily as for brick-and-mortar agents, if not even more so. It is essential to provide virtual training via a self-paced curriculum. Webinars, video conference calls and chat tools help to reinforce training over time. Training materials should be "always on" to easily allow the supervisor or coach to suggest review, retraining and quality improvement.That means 24/7 access to enable your agents to engage in continual improvement. 

 

 

 

Best practices:

• Training materials should be available 24/7
• Implement a self-paced curriculum
• Take advantage of webinars, video conference and chat

4. Workforce management

Virtual agents are willing and eager to work, and their work assignments should reflect the value placed on their punctuality and performance. Allow them to bid on shifts based on seniority and performance. Resist the urge to reroute to the brick and mortar team during periods of low call volume to avoid sending those agents home; rather, reward the best-performing virtual agents with the appropriate call volume so they generate as much value as possible from their allotted hours. Removing hours from well-performing virtual agents is a good way to decrease morale.

Best practices:

• Bid on shifts based on performance
• Avoid favoring brick-and-mortar agents on shifts
• Increase morale by consistently rewarding performance among both virtual and brick and mortar agents

5. Performance management

With the big data tools available today, there is no need to fear a lack of productivity or morale among virtual agents. It is essential to implement tools that will allow for real time interaction and online collaboration among agents and between agents and supervisors. Instant messaging tools are a must and should facilitate collaboration while allowing for multiple simultaneous supervisor chats. An ideal situation for a supervisor would include a collaborative team chat window (for all members of the team to chat together) and the option for nested windows for one-on-one chats with or between agents. Additionally, supervisors should solicit regular feedback from agents through chat or, for a more structured approach, online surveys.

Best practices:

• Select real time tools to facilitate collaboration
• Provide tools for both collaborative and one-on-one chat
• Solicit agent feedback regularly

6. Motivation

Keep in mind that the biggest factor in agent motivation is the corporate culture in which they are operating. Varying business models (full time employee, independent contractors, part time employee) will spawn different motivational models, but any and all of these models work equally well when the motivations of agents, supervisors and clients are in alignment. Take the time to state and align your goals and methods of measurement. A few additional tips:

• Host meet space events If you have a brick and mortar location, leverage it by hosting a quarterly party for in-the-flesh meet and greets. The location can be used to give a sense of place and purpose.
• Provide daily feedback Feedback should be a daily habit, as it is the most important contributor to retention. Use email, chat or video conferencing for daily positive feedback and coaching. Spoken's HyperQuality team excels at allowing you to coach your agents to be EvenBetter®, and their expertise is at your disposal.
• Get real-time access No one should fly blind. The use of real-time, easy-to-read dashboards helps agents, supervisors and executives to understand current performance and how it relates to the team and overall goals.

Best practices:

• Align motivational models of agents, supervisors and clients
• Host in-the-flesh events
• Provide coaching and feedback every day
• Use real time dashboard for an overall view of performance and possibilities for motivation and improvement

7. HR practices

The two keys to virtual human resources are security and transparency. With technical innovations, it's easy to implement secure online tools such as DocuSign to safely eliminate the need for hard copy documentation. And in terms of transparency, keep in mind that a work from home model necessitates the ability to connect virtually in order to communicate, monitor and enforce policies and procedures in a consistent manner. Additionally, bonus and pay programs should be kept consistent from agent to agent; in the online world, nothing is kept secret! Even pay grades and bonuses should be fully transparent; in fact, that full disclosure can be an excellent motivational tool.

Best practices:

• Take advantage of secure online tools for documentation and onboarding
• Adopt a policy of transparency to communicate, monitor and enforce policies
• Keep pay and bonus structures consistent and transparent

Finally and perhaps most importantly, your organization must build trust with each and every virtual agent. Again, in the online world, nothing is secret, including how you and your corporate culture support and reward your virtual agents. Insisting upon regular, consistent and open communications with your agents will not only deliver immediate positive results but will also serve to improve retention rates, enhance your brand image and build long-term agent loyalty. For a successful and loyal virtual agent workforce, the most important best practice is to foster consistent and persistent communications.

For more information on implementing work-from-home agents, download our free remote agent whitepaper or visit Spoken.

To SIP or not to SIP

SIP trunking is becoming the telephony protocol du jour in call centers. But is SIP trunking worth the integration headaches?

We've discussed the basic differences between SIP and TDM before. Briefly, SIP is a protocol for controlling and directing communications, including voice, video and data, over IP (Internet Protocol). The advantages include the ability to deliver high-definition video and related call data along with call audio over a single pipe as well as an inherent flexibilty and cost savings.

But is SIP all it's cracked up to be? In a recent report, we believe that Forrester principal analyst Art Schoeller gave SIP trunking a qualified "yes" under the title SIP Trunking May Save You Money (Forrester Research, Inc., August 2011). Because let's face it: upgrading call center infrastructure is a lofty undertaking, and most organizations won't do so without substantial proven benefits, which must include cost savings.

So why migrate to SIP?

The report cites the following:

• SIP trunking will displace T1 and primary rate interface (PRI) circuits.
• The cost savings for enterprises can range from 25% to 35% over traditional T1 and PRI access.
• Over time, SIP-based signaling and VoIP will ultimately replace circuit switched technology for carrier access.
• SIP signaling occurs over trunked lines, which is critical for future advanced signaling operations such as high-definition video and audio.

That being said, Forrester reports that the American rate of SIP adoption is relatively low, with forty-three percent of enterprises reporting they are not interested or have no specific plans to deploy SIP.

So what's the holdup?

• Packetized voice quality. SIP trunking packetizes voice using the G.711 or G.729 codecs, and this can affect speech recognition and other applications that depend on voice quality to operate effectively.
• Interoperability. Carriers may or may not effectively manage the interoperability between their networks and others.
• Lack of carrier response. From the report: "Forrester has observed that enterprises wanting to move to SIP trunking have found their incumbent service providers were slow to respond and provided less aggressive pricing.This is understandable because SIP trunks cannibalize their existing T1 and PRI revenue and margins."

Conclusion and quick tips

In spite of the challenges, the report still concludes "SIP trunking provides a good business case despite the risks that we document above." Additional advice for those considering the move to SIP is to be assured of geographically diverse failover and alternate routing to mitigate the downtime risk and to avoid unnecessary compression on a single pipe. A few additional tips:

• Session Border Controllers are absolutely a necessity as a known service control point to manage traffic. Never skip the SBC.
• Mid-call codec switching can help with voice compression issues. Use high-quality, lower-compression codec for the IVR portion of the call to maximize speech recognition, which requires higher voice quality. Then switch to the lower codec mid-call for the agent transfer.
• The "final mile" issue. The "final mile" refers to the final leg of the voice journey, which is into the at-home agent's home. Because bandwidth to individual homes will always fluctuate, try individual testing and be prepared to switch back to TDM if SIP doesn't provide adequate results.

Is it time to move your contact center to the cloud?

Recent research indicates the cloud is coming of age for contact centers

Last month, Forrester produced a stellar piece of research on the rate of cloud adoption by call centers, (Forrester Research, Inc., Is It Time To Move Your Contact Center to the Cloud? June, 2012). The good news is the report author, Art Schoeller, predicts that adoption of cloud technologies by call centers will only increase, since the technology has become more mainstream and more mature. Additionally, the previous barriers to entry, including security and reliability concerns, have been reduced over the past few years as cloud providers have successfully addressed these issues.

In 2012, the adoption rate for cloud technology is predicted to increase significantly for IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service). So whether organizations are seeking to move their CRM or the entire telephony platform to the cloud, adoption rates are due to increase fairly dramatically throughout the rest of 2012.

In fact, the report indicates that "By the end of 2012, 45% of all companies will be using SaaS, rising to 60% in the years to come."

Why so slow?

Cloud technology has been around for many years. Why is it that the contact center has been so slow to adopt it? As the report points out, the architecture tends to have longer life cycles; an ACD might last 10-15 years. Additionally, let's not underestimate the power of call center managers to resist change. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" runs strong in an environment where every tool is subject to cost-cutting measures. If a call center can squeeze a few more years out of a current infrastructure piece or tool, why disrupt the entire operation by introducting new technology? From the report:

Many contact center managers who operate at a single site see limited value in the migration to voice over IP (VoIP) and will only do so when a vendor declares the existing application's end of life.

Shift to an integrated suite model

Interestingly, the report cites one more challenge that represents a shift in thinking: most current centers were designed with a best-of-breed approach, meaning that existing call center infrastructure and software tools, from the ACD to CTI to IVR, were all selected as best-of-breed from specialty vendors. However, this best-of-breed model is shifting more towards an integrated suite model in which one provider supplies and manages a variety of applications. This shift leaves current organizations in a quandary: either integrate current systems with some cloud applications or wait until all current infrastructure depreciates fully and replace the entire kit and caboodle.

(On a related note, Spoken has addressed this quandry by offering extremely flexible integration options with any current infrastructure or systems that might not yet be at end of life. Custom integration with legacy systems is essential at this point in the cloud adoption cycle to ensure that clients can recoup all the investments made in existing systems. Reduce, reuse, recycle. And if necessary and timely, replace.)

Additionally, the benefits of an integrated suite model for contact centers include:

• Reducing headaches. With fewer discreet vendors and systems to manage, organizations can focus less on keeping contact center applications running and more on their core business.
• Simplifying reporting. One suite of applications usually translates into one cohesive, integrated reporting structure.
• Shifting maintenance. When a vendor is reponsible for a suite of applications, that provider also handles MACs (moves, adds and changes), saving the organization considerable time and resources.

Also, many providers have partnered with larger suppliers to enhance their suite offerings with well-known technology brands, so the risk of engaging in an integrated suite solution with a small or mid-size provider is mitigated.

What are your thoughts on the rate of cloud applications by contact centers?

Spoken Communications provides an integrated suite of applications for the call center. Find out more.

The evolution of speech recognition [INFOGRAPHIC]

Ever wonder how we got to Siri? This nifty infographic captures the history of speech recognition, beginning with Pope Sylvester II's Brazen Head, which reportedly gave yes/no answers to questions, kind of like an ancient Magic Eight Ball.

I think my favorite is John of Bell Labs saying in 1969 that speech recognition will not be a reality for several decades because it requires artificial intelligence. Granted, anyone who has called an IVR in the last few years might still argue that speech recognition still doesn't involve any type of intelligence, but you have to admit that Siri is pretty cool.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Why the call center won't go away

The call center is still at the heart of customer service, despite competition from online self-service, web chat and smartphone apps.

With all the fuss about multi-channel communications and unified communications in the call center, you'd think that the phone would be declared obselete, with new customers preferring the path of the iPad, smartphone or carrier pigeon.

But a recent survey by Forrester determined that 79% of customers still prefer an old-fashioned, one-on-one conversation to the call center, above even the super-convenient online chat or the time-delayed email. And even with call centers clamoring for online, mobile and multi-channel support, 72% of customer service still happens in the call center. Amazing.

With the average cost of an inbound call hitting $5.90, call centers (should we call them "contact centers" if 72% of the volume is still phone calls?) are always looking for ways to help customers help themselves. Web self-service, automated phone self-service and smartphone applications are all tools that contact centers have used to enable customers to service themselves rather than waiting for a live agent. And with 51% of the contact center budget going toward agent salaries, it makes sense to direct customers with a preference for self-service away from the live agent path to better accommodate those who prefer a live voice.

Thanks to Zendesk for creating this lovely infographic letting everyone know those agent's call center jobs are safe:

 

Image originally posted on Zengage, The Zendesk Blog

The most convincing video against texting and driving

How dangerous is texting while driving? Ask someone who is required to do it.

We've published statistics on the dangers of texting while driving, and as a speech recogniton company, we look at voice control as a possible solution. However, the best argument I've seen against texting while driving: oblige young people to text and drive during their driving test so they can see how dangerous it is. Brilliant.

Watch the video, sponsored by Responsible Young Drivers, Renault, Michelin, Ethias, Europcar and more here.

This week in customer service

The best links on customer service this week

Every week brings new studies, information and even good, old-fashioned books on the call center and how it can be used to improve customer service. We curate the content and bring you the best links on customer service for this first week of May:

• The role of first call resolution in customer satisfaction It's a metric, but how do we use it and why? Impact Learning breaks it down with some great stats: 12% of cus­tomers leave if it takes 2 or more calls to resolve their issue, and for every 1% improve­ment in FCR, you get a 1% improve­ment in cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.
• And speaking of measurement: Why customer experience needs to balance qualitative, quantitative approaches A thoughtful essay on the value of both quantitative metrics and the distinctly un-quantitative customer happiness that they represent
• An interesting formula for determining the ROI of social media customer service: by measuring the call deflection rate from the traditional call center
• And speaking of social media customer service, Brian Solis wrote this tongue-in-cheek foreword for the new book written by the king of social media customer service, Frank Eliason, who ran the Comcast Twitter team and is now making waves at Citibank.

How Siri is making your call center look bad

It's not easy running a contact center in the age of Siri. Customer expectations of speech recognition are more complex and higher than ever, and traditional speech rec IVRs can't keep up. What is a call center to do?

If you think that smartphone usage doesn't affect the contact center, think again. Gartner reported that worldwide fourth quarter sales of smartphones in 2011 were estimated at 149 million. A Pew Internet survey found that as of May 2011, 35% of Americans owned a smartphone. JP Morgan predicted that 657 smartphones will leave stores in 2012. And the GSMA reported that second only to SMS messaging, native apps comprise the highest level of smartphone activity usage, capturing more than 20 minutes of average daily on-screen time.

And many of those apps are voice-controlled apps, Siri being the most popular among voice recognition tools.

The smartphone experience with speech recognition technology has already changed user expectations of interactions with automation in the contact center. Your callers might be wondering, "If Siri can understand me, why can't you?" The Siri Effect is hitting call centers hard, and all IVRs and call flow designs should be under scrutiny.

The truth is that in the age of Siri, DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency signaling, or touch tone response such as "Push 1 for sales, 2 for billing," etc.) doesn't cut it anymore. And customer care facilities should see this trend in user sophistication with respect to speech recognition as an opportunity rather than a curse.

The smackdown: IVR vs. Siri

While user expectations might be the same for a call center IVR as for a mobile speech-enabled app, the two have until now been vastly different in their goals and structures. Take a look at the structure, context and business expectation for each:

And due to changing user expectations, the contact center is experiencing a major shift in perceived value. This goes beyond asking callers to rate their satisfaction with a particular agent or a single call; these shifted expectations in terms of speech recognition interactions affect the entire corporate culture and the contact center's reason for being.

Paradigm shift: from cost center to loyalty engine

In the call center world, the old paradigm was to see the contact center exclusively as a cost center. This drove the quality metric of Average Handle Time, because the less amount of time spent on the phone with the customer, the lower the cost, right? This also drove organizations to create DTMF menu trees: who cares if the caller has to listen to three levels of menus and make six menu choices, as long as the forced-choice DTMF menu is easy for the organization to create? The organization didn't hesitate to make the caller do the work of navigating the DTMF IVR menu, because this is a cost center, anyway, right?

The paradigm that contact centers must adopt is the one that users have now come to expect: the contact center is a customer loyalty engine, not a cost center. Average Handle Time must be replaced by First Call Resolution, which is what the customer (not the organization) truly cares about. Users now expect accurate speech recognition, which is a little more work for the organization to create compared to a forced-choice DTMF menu, but it is much easier and more natural for the user to navigate. And speech recognition makes the technology do the work, not the caller. This is the new benchmark created by Siri: use technology to focus on a friction-free customer experience.

Why IVR speech recognition doesn't match the Siri experience

Let's take a look at how the Automated Speech Recognition engines (ASR) work in a typical speech recognition IVR call flow within the contact center. Let's say that Acme Widgets, Inc. has a speech recognition IVR for call routing, and the first prompt asks the caller "How may I help you?" The caller makes some sort of speech utterance as the Reason for Call (RFC), which the engine then parses compares to a language model of dynamic data based on hundreds or thousands of caller response utterances and converts to text for reference and improvement.

Based on the comparison of the converted utterance to the language knowledge base, the RFC is categorized into one of a series of buckets, such as sales, billing, customer service or tech support. Then the call is routed to the correct agent skill.

Where most contact center ASRs fail in comparison to Siri is between the language model and categorization. Because call center grammars are traditionally narrow, it's common for any unexpected utterance to fail because the developers didn't anticipate exactly what the caller might say. In this highly structured environment, one unclear syllable can make the difference between a smooth caller experience and a frustrating one.

How to match the Siri experience in the contact center

I'm not sure how other speech technologists have dealt with the rise in speech recognition expectations in the wake of Siri, but I'll share with you Spoken's solution to the issue. Since understanding the reason for call and identifying the caller are keys to accurate call routing, it's of vital importance that the speech recognition engine capture and interpret those caller utterances with near 100% accuracy.

However, within the structure of the contact center environment, even the very best ASRs out there only return about 50% accuracy for any one customer utterance. That means that even if the ASR understands nine digits of the phone number the caller utters, the system will still fail for lack of the tenth digit, and the caller will have a bad experience.

The Spoken approach is to support the technology with a hybrid solution: provide human Silent Guides that work in the background to correct those utterances that would otherwise fail. (If you're curious, find out more about how this works.) The Guides supplement the automation and bring the speech recognition accuracy level closer to 90%. If you're curious about the cost comparison, the quick answer is that because the Guides handles up to 10 simultaneous calls and reduce agent load, most customers experience a cost savings of about 15% over ASR alone.

What's really valuable is that the human safety net provides what pure ASRs can't: an additional layer of accuracy that improves speech recognition and keeps the experience closer to that of Siri.

Sophisticated speech automation for the win

Whatever approach organizations take to addressing the contact center in the age of Siri, the more sophisticated expectations of their customers can't be ignored. And while sites like GetHuman would suggest that what callers really want is a human agent, both Siri and studies have shown that users prefer automation over a live agent for simple tasks. And while 80% of callers will attempt to opt out or game the system when presented with a DTMF menu tree, over 90% will respond when asked an open-ended question such as, "How may I help you?"

Users are expecting more from speech-enabled IVRs than ever before. How is your organization addressing those heightened expectations?