1.
Touchscreen Self-Service:
How to Transform the Self-Service Customer Experience
By Dr. Natalie Petouhoff
www.DrNatalieNews.com
@DrNatalie on Twitter

2.
Dr. Natalie’s Background
Analyst Rankings:
Customer Service & Customer
Experience / CRM
PWC Management Consultant
Chief Strategist for Social Media &
Digital Communications
PR & Marketing Agency
Top Forrester
Customer Service,
Social Media, CRM
Analyst
Instructor at Center for Entertainment, Media
and Sports Summer Institutes at UCLA Anderson

3.
I’ve Written Books or Chapters In Other People’s Books

4.
Quoted in
the News

5.
The Agenda
• Origins of Self-Service Technology
• The Evolution of Self-Service Technology
• How Touchscreen Self-Service is Transforming the
Customer Experience

6.
Setting the Stage for Evolution:
1939 New York’s World Fair
Attendance:
206,000
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/science-secrets-revealed-at-new-york-worlds-fail/
Speech was on:
• Radio
• Television

7.
The 1939 World’s Fair’s Theme…
Building The World of Tomorrow

8.
• Can you imagine needing a brochure to explain TV?
• The brochure answered FAQs
• TV was one of the hot, new technologies
http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/preview_of_tv.pdf

9.
The questions back then were -- so basic….
“Will a TV receiver purchased in one city receive programs in another city?”
“How many people can comfortably see a TV broadcast?”
http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/preview_of_tv.pdf

10.
Along with the brochure,
people at the Fair who
saw themselves on TV…
were given a certificate to
prove what they saw—
was so…
Even back then,
companies were
counting on
word-of-mouth…

11.
Average TV audience was 8,000 people
Dramatic shows most popular
Program production costs are $10K-$15K/ week

12.
Another important technology that
contributed to the IVR technology
we have today was
at the 1939 Fair: the Voder
It synthesized human speech by
breaking it down into sounds &
reproducing them electronically

13.
And at the Fair, the Voder Machine was used for the voice of a robot Elektro
(by Westinghouse)
This was the beginnings of speech technology later deveioped into speech recognition & IVRs

14.
Technology continued to evolve…
Another key component of IVRs was
• DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency)
• Allowed customers to be routed without a human operator
• Before that answering, connecting & transferring customer to the right
person required a switchboard operator
Each key has certain tones or
Frequencies assigned to it…

15.
Other technologies continued to evolve…
The first interactive touchscreens
Nearly 30 years after the Voder, the first touchscreens started to appear
This is the University of Illinois Plato IV, used in a classroom
Allowing students to touch the screen to answer questions.

16.
TV Shows like Star Trek paralleled
the advancement of
touch screen technology
Star Trek Bridge Touch Screens
IBM & Bell South:
Simon Personal Communicator
Apple’s
Touch-capable Newton PDA

17.
Touchscreens are now everywhere
Homes…
Retail
Cashier Machines…
Food Menus
In Restaurants…

18.
Technology continued to evolve from…
Automated Attendant to…
Voice Response Units to…
Interactive Voice Response…
Along with that came
Very long IVR scripts
And prompts

19.
Why not Customer Service?
Customer Get Frustrated
With Push-Button Phone IVRs
Requires customers listen & remember the phone tree menu

20.
Not much has changed…
IBM Self-Service Study
2007
• 69% experienced technical difficulties with self-service
2011
• 83% of customers still feel IVR systems provide either:
• No benefit at all or
• Only a cost savings to the company
• 67% still prefer live-agent service
The problem:
Agent-assisted service is the most costly option of service

21.
THE PROMISE OF SELF-SERVICE
Self-service proposed benefits
• Offer a user-friendly, practical, self-service channel
• Lower agent-assisted call volume
• Improve call center efficiency and capacity
• Free-up Customer Service agents to handle more complicated cases
• Lower average handling time (AHT)
• Minimize holding time
• Drive more accurate routing:
• Direct customer to the right agent, the first time
• Reduce costs:
• Downsize telephony
• training costs
• Agent frustration, stress and hence attrition.

22.
Gen X, Y Z are the
largest group of customers
40M
aka Silent Generation or
Golden Generation
80M
140M
aka Millennials
20M

23.
While most people do still use the phone, people
are migrating to other channels, web, social text…
• Part of that is because they know the phone works
• Part of it’s because the other channels are new
• Or need improvements
80%
70%
Older Boomers &
Golden Gen
(56+)
60%
50%
Gen X & Younger
Boomers
(36-55)
40%
30%
Gen Y & Younger
(18-35)
20%
10%
0%
Phone
Web
Social
SMS

24.
Generational Differences are Driving New Preferences
in The Device they receive service on…

25.
Self-Service Couldn’t Deliver on the Promise
Customers:
• Hated trying to remember lengthy call menus to know which button
corresponded to the service they needed
• Didn’t bother listening and “zero-out”
• System randomly disconnected them
• Frustrated, customers hang-up

26.
Testing IVR for Great Customer Experience
Often only best-in-class companies tested their IVRs:
•
•
•
•
Validate the scripting
The prompts
Confirm menu options were helpful to customers
So the IVR didn’t result in customers opting to speak to an agent
The result? IVRs were designed to
reduce agent-assisted call length
•
•
•
But when the customer experience was
poor, IVRs didn’t lower agent-assisted calls
Agent salaries: one of the biggest costs
Self-service failed to deliver on the promise
of greatly reducing costs

27.
The B.I.G. Question is…
What’s the best IVR strategy & technology?
• Simple
• Easy to use
• User-friendly
• Become customer’s preference over calling
• Contact center doesn’t need to do a rip &
replace of the current IVR

28.
Evolution:
Push-Button IVR  ?????
Before
Press 1 for…
Press 1 for…
Press 2 for…
Press 3 for…
Press 0 for
Operator

29.
What if Customers…
• Could see the prompts on their phone
• Didn’t have to try to remember what each prompt said
• Didn’t have to move the phone from their ear to look at
the key pad & recall which number to push
Might make
customer satisfaction
go up….
Among other things…..

30.
It’s always been true…
The Contact
Center is
Like a
Canary in
Coal Mine

31.
Most everything the business needs to know…
• What’s working
• What’s not working
• What would be better if…
Can be seen by evaluating
customer conversations…
But it’s been difficult to “get”
senior management to understand that…

32.
Today Customer’s Post Comments online…
• On review sites like – Yelp, Amazon…
• On Facebook
• On Twitter
• In Forums & Communities…
Just because a company is not listening online,
doesn’t mean that customer’s are not posting…
What is wrong in a company often is posted in social networks

33.
Word-of-mouth in social media tends
to be very direct & authentic
Most everything the business
needs to know…
• What’s working
• What’s not working
• What would be better if…
Can be seen in social networks…

34.
Technology Evolution:
Offer a Better Customer Experience
with Touchscreen IVR
Customers can:
• See the prompts on their phone
• Don’t need to remember what
each prompt said
• Don’t have to move the phone
from their ear
• Look at the key pad & recall
which number to push

35.
How a Visual IVR works:
Customer Chooses:
All Reservations
Then Chooses:
Change
Reservation

36.
Customer Enters the Confirmation Number

37.
Or the Customer has the choice to
Talk to an Agent who has all their information
All the customer interaction data is preserved so customer
doesn’t have to repeat to agent what they did…

38.
The same
visual IVR on
the phone…
…works on the Website, too!

39.
The customer
reads the
menu choices
…picks the item they need

40.
Easily follow
the options…
…and the choices

41.
They can
identify
themselves
…Its all so easy….

42.
Using Touchscreen IVRs
Take Less Time

43.
No Need to Retire the Current IVR Technology,
i. e., Rip and Replace…
Just Evolve The IVR’s Interface

44.
• Takes Your Current IVR
• The Technology Interprets the IVR
• Renders a Visual IVR with enhanced features for
Your Website & Mobile Devices

45.
Changes Within One Channel are
Immediately Duplicated to All Presences
IVR Script Editor

46.
Deployment Schedule Is Short

47.
Let’s look at a website:
Old Way to Reach Out To a Company:
Contact Us Form
• 1-800 number
• E-Mail, fill out form
• Static FAQs
• Static Links
• Static Helpful Links

48.
New Way to Reach Out To a Company:
Contact Us Form… but…
Click on
Visual IVR
Website button

49.
Customer Experience:
Customer Touches the option to get help

50.
Customer Experience:
Customer Answers the question

51.
Contact Us Becomes An Interactive,
Visual Touchscreen With Easy to Read Options
Visual IVR Menu
Opens Up
Customers can:
• See the choices
• Touch the screen to
get what they need

52.
Answer is presented
If the customers wants to talk to someone, they can
• Call
• Chat…

53.
Chat box opens
• Not sure how to integrate chat
to your website?
• Now you can save yourself the
cost of figuring that out!
All customer interactions can be seen by agent
• So agent is not starting from scratch
• Customer experience across all channels is perserved
• Customer can get specific questions answered quickly

54.
Customer can
navigate backwards
Traditional IVRs force customers to listen to a whole menu
• Often going backwards is difficult or impossible or
• The IVR hangs up on the customer

55.
What’s on the website
is exactly the same mobile devices
• Don’t have a mobile app?
• Now you can save yourself
the cost of creating one!

56.
You can get your customers started by
sending them a Text Message

57.
One Click and the Visual IVR Menu Opens
Up on the Mobile Device

58.
If customers don’t have smart phone…
• While web, mobile web and native iOS and Android are very
popular, there are large sections of customers who do not have
smart phones
• The Visual IVR can support non-feature rich phones through the
USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) protocol
• USSD is supported across most GSM carriers and
• Provides an alternative mechanism for rendering a visual IVR
interface to these types of customers

59.
The Business Case For Visual IVR***
• Decreasing the number of “zero-outs” or agent-assisted calls
• Knowing more about the customer and why they are calling if
they opt to talk to an agent so you can:
• Decrease Average Handle Time
• Increase First Contact Resolution and
• Eliminate asking a customer to repeat their interaction
history and details of their story / issue when they
connect to an agent
• Providing a consistent experience regardless of which channel
the customer uses
***Upcoming white paper… on all of this…

60.
The ROI of Visual IVRs
23% Reduced Call Volume
4% Reduction in Call Transfers
73% Minutes Deflected
www.visual-ivr.com/calculator.

61.
Signs Your IVR is Not
Meeting Customer Expectations
 IVR “zero-out” rate is greater than 7%
 Percentage of call transfer within contact center is high
 Your company’s website is listed on sites that show customers
how to “zero-out” to reach an agent
 Grumpy customers
 Often customers who use an IVR still reach out to an agent,
and are even more frustrated than when they first tried to
reach the company

62.
Sample Questions To Ask
Customer’s About Your IVR
Ask your customers if they feel:
 Forced to listen to long, introductory prompts?
 Are the menu options so long that they have a difficult time deciphering or remembering
which option to choose?
 Is the navigation path clear, i.e., is it easy for them choose the right option to get their
answer as well as to go back to the main or previous menu?
 Does the IVR system hang-up on them when they don’t respond fast enough or go down a
IVR path that is a dead-end?
 When picking an IVR menu option, does the agent receive the information about the
customer or does the customer have to repeat it all once connected with an agent? (I.e., is
the agent desktop computer telephony integration (CTI) delivering all customer
interaction data to the agent?)
 When using your IVR, especially on mobile devices, do customers become frustrated, and
just zero-out vs. navigate the IVR menu tree?

63.
THANK YOU!
DoctorNatalie@gmail.com
@DrNatalie
www.DrNatalieNews.com
Q&A