The Adaptive Audio – VUI Cloud Blog

The hallmarks of a great self-service voice application are not a whole lot different from that of a great CSR. After all, they serve (or are supposed to serve) the same purpose; your customers need for service and information via telephone. In fact, from the caller’s perspective, engaging with an IVR application is similar to engaging with another human. Callers are, generally speaking, fair and reasonable individuals that are willing to work with a CSR or technology as long as that engagement seems to be working for them.

Figure 1 shows how an “engagement threshold” exists for the caller when they use an IVR application the first few times. Notice that, though it may be slightly different for Speech and DTMF, there is a significant threshold after 2 – 3 successful interactions by the caller. This critical period is when callers ask themselves whether this automated process will work for them so they don’t have to wait for a CSR, or whether they are wasting their time when they may end up talking to a CSR anyway.

Figure 1 - The Caller Engagement Threshold

Reaching this “buy in” point is critical to the success of any voice application. The likelihood that a returning caller will use the Read more…

In an earlier post and supporting white paper I talked about how caller adaptive technology helps the mobile experience and the handling of callers of different skill levels. Here, I want to present supporting data for this type of technology – data collected from production trials.

Based on production metrics gathered at various installations,the figure below illustrates the relationships between average call length, the number of script levels and the effectiveness of adaptive technology at optimizing the call process.

These data indicate improvements in the Average Handle Time (AHT), Average Handle Rate (AHR), IVR Utilization (IVR turns per call) and Caller Input Error Rates.

The benefits of adaptive technology to optimize self-service telephone calls vary based on the design, content and average call duration of Read more…

More than ever in the past, today’s telephony based voice applications must address large and very diverse calling populations.

This audience uses a wide variety of personal, mobile and landline based devices in various modes to access information over the phone.

Some facts and figures:

• At the end of 2011, there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

• Mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 5:1 (more so in developing nations)

• According to the US Census Bureau, the hearing loss population in the US has grown to over 31.5 million

• Linguists estimate that half of the world’s population is bilingual and there are about 5,000-6,000 different languages spoken in the world today.

• People of a particular culture or regional dialect may be comfortable with long pauses at the conclusion of a sentence, while people of another may find this demonstrates disinterest, lack of attentiveness and even disrespect.

Mobile phone use globally in 2011

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In an earlier blog entry, I mentioned some production tests we performed at a client site to measure optimal speaking rates (words per minute) for IVR callers.

Individual callers speed and accuracy determined whether (and by how much) the audio playback rate was increased or decreased at each IVR script Interaction Point (IP).

An IP might be as simple as answering yes/no, selecting from a menu, entering a 16 digit credit card number or anything in between.

A caller that behaved as an expert throughout the call would experience an audio playback speed adjustment profile that went from 100% to 108% and then to a final maximum rate of 112% of normal playback.

A caller that was not quite an expert, but better than average, experienced an adjustment profile of 100%, 105%, 108% and 110%.

Callers with less than average speed and accuracy experienced similar adjustment profiles in the opposite direction – 100%, 95%, 92% and so forth.

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January 10th, 2012 – Reported From:
The Department of Psychology
Human-Computer Interaction Lab
Houston, Texas

Rice University has been studying the feasibility of using IVR Systems for voting in political elections.

One concern with allowing voters to use this means of casting a ballot is knowing whether or not the voter clearly understands what and for whom they are voting.

Older voters, or the hearing impaired, may not be able to understand audio messages spoken at playback speeds better suited to typical callers. Alternatively, certain callers may be more comfortable with a dialogue pace that moves a little faster – especially if there are many candidates, elections and voting options.

The University chose Interactive Digital’s Adaptive Audio software to enhance their existing IVR System with the capability to match audio playback speed to suit each individual caller.

Danae Holmes of the University’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab says  ”I have been working with Interactive Digital’s Adaptive Audio product for over three months now.

Our voice application is a prototype voting application used to study accessible voting in political elections.

We wanted a product that would allow callers with varying telephone script navigation skills the ability to speed up or slow down the caller dialogue as needed. As a very important requirement of the project, we needed a way to do this without making expensive custom changes to the voice application itself. Interactive Digital’s Adaptive Audio product accomplished this for us with only a single line of code added to our application.

The software performs as advertised, speeding up the dialogue flow for more skilled callers while allowing elderly, hearing impaired and less skilled callers to have a more productive call experience. I am impressed with both the product and support we have received from Interactive Digital.”

To learn more about how dynamically adjusting the call experience to suit individual callers helps your bottom line, contact Interactive Digital today.

Apple, Ally Bank, Amazon and Zappos. What do all of these companies have in common?

Besides great products, innovative marketing strategies and extensive product eco-systems, they all deliver on one more essential ingredient: Exceptional Customer Service.

Take Apple for instance. I brought my MacBook into the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store a few months ago. Two of the four little feet that keep the MacBook off the desk fell off. Despite the fact that the machine was more than 3 years old and that I did not have an Apple Care service plan, they still took the machine in the back and glued on four new ones for me. And while I had to make an appointment for this, but how about that there’s even such a thing as a Genius Bar in a retail store to accommodate me in the first place?

I’ve had many similar first rate customer experiences at Amazon, Best Buy and even some small retailers I have done business with through eBay. Responsive email and chat support, free shipping both ways, customer reviews right on the retailers own web site, extended product return and replacement policies and so on. Todays recession weary, highly connected consumer is demanding and changing business models and the customer service landscape as we speak.

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