I just read a nice post on the Marketing Productivity Blog on a topic I/we’ve known for quite some time, but probably never put into words.  To summarize, here’s a snippet from that post…

Fact is, an IVR is a technical interface to humans, just like a web site is.  And just like many web sites, it was probably built and programmed by some engineers without a lot of direction from Marketing or Customer Service.  There’s really no reason at all why the folks optimizing the web site should not also optimize the phone system too - especially if they do a good job with the web site! 

All of this is related to VUI Design, as is the topic of a lot of the posts on this blog.  The concept seems pretty simple… apply to the phone all the best practices discovered in the countless web usability studies done over the past 15 years. (As an aside, here’s a great resource for web usability studies.)

But wait… wasn’t the phone around BEFORE the web?  Why aren’t we using all of the best practice studies done on phone usability?  When you find a phone usability study that is worthwhile before even 10 years ago, let me know.  Fact is, a phone was a phone back then, and IVR or any kind of automation was a thing for massive companies, and all built by the Operations team.  Once the web hit, people kind of abandoned the phone for quite some time.  In recent years, companies have come to realize that the phone is still a MAJOR touch point for their customers; additionally, phone technologies really took off and companies had more options with what to do with it to make it more than just a two-cans-and-a-string connection between two people.

So, companies picked up right where they’d left off 10 years ago with their phone, and the Operations team put together very similar phone systems that were seen 10 years prior.  Not good… enter poor usability, poor customer satisfaction, and rebellion against the now widespread use of phone automation.

This doesn’t mean we should abandon the phone again.  We should do what we did with the web… and make it BETTER and more USABLE.  The first websites out there, and the first web ordering systems were pretty awful.  Customers didn’t like them and didn’t trust them.  Did companies abandon the web?  Hardly.  They made it better… and then better… and then better still… until their customers actually preferred it over going to a store. 

Who made the web better?  Sure, Operations teams all over the country had a hand in it… Marketers certainly don’t understand all the coding behind making a web order system work.  But Marketers sure understand what their customers like.  And even more, CUSTOMERS understand what customers like. 

So take a tip from those who have come and studied before… enlist the help of your Marketing team in developing language and call flow for your IVR system.  After all, Marketers are typically pretty good with the spoken word, but they have a good sense of what the most important issues to your callers may be based on the analytics they see from the website.

And… don’t forget to use your customers as one of the best resources for how to design your phone system.  Done right, you can change the tune of the customers who call your IVR system, just like was done with the web over the years!