This document discusses best practices for building world-class voice applications (IVRs). It begins by explaining why people dislike IVRs and argues that people dislike bad automation, not self-service itself. It then outlines three key challenges with IVRs: they impose themselves on users, have a constrained voice interface, and must simulate human behavior. The document advocates for a "Caller First" philosophy of rapid development, leveraging caller and application data, and intelligent behavior. Examples of intelligent behavior include avoiding main menus, prioritizing options, and bypassing automation for unhappy callers. The presentation concludes by emphasizing the importance of data and putting the caller first.

1. Be an IVR Rock Star:Be an IVR Rock Star:
Best Practices For Building World-Class Voice Applications
Dr. Ahmed Bouzid
Director of Product, Angel

2. Angel Company Overview
• Founded in 1999 as a BU of MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR)
• Patented IVR Technology: 25+ granted
• Over 1,000 customers in 20 different industries
• Over 10,000 applications deployed including many of nation’s top
consumer brands
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• Industry Awards for Technology Excellence:

3. Agenda
1. Introduction
– Why people hate IVRs
– Why IVRs – For the enterprise and callers
– People don’t hate self-service, they hate bad automation
2. The Three Challenges of IVR
– Automation is imposed on the user
– There is a constrained nature of VUI
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– System is simulating uniquely human behavior
3. The Caller First Philosophy
– Rapid development allowing for design and testing
– Leveraging data about callers
– Leveraging data about the application
4. Intelligent Behavior
– Examples of intelligent behavior
– Some scenarios

4. Why People Don’t Like IVRs
1. You are asked by the agent to repeat information that you already provided to the IVR.
2. You can’t tell what option in the menu is the right one to choose.
3. It gives you a long menu when you always ask for the same thing.
4. You are made to wait a long time only to be routed to voice mail.
5. You wait a long time only to discover that you are in the wrong queue.
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6. You are bounced around from one IVR system to another IVR system.
7. You are made to listen to several minutes of nonsense before you are offered anything
that you care about.
8. The IVR system asks you to call at a later time and then hangs up on you.

5. Why IVRs: For the Enterprise
Handle volume: Never enough people to staff a call center.
Reduce costs: Deflect calls from expensive agents.
Increase revenue: Systematic up-selling, cross-selling.
Increase agent satisfaction: push complex tasks to agents.
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Systematic tracking of calls/activities: What services, products selected.
Customer Satisfaction: Serving the client off hours.
Scalability: crisis, peaks.

6. Why IVRs: For Callers
No waiting: empowering self-service.
Facilitate task completion: logging notes into CRM by speaking.
Privacy: sensitive information (test results).
Security: Providing credit card information.
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Security: Providing credit card information.
24x7x365: Convenience of access.
Being able to take your time: not rushed by human
Speed of task completion: When you know what to do and just need to do it.
Not being sold by a human: Turning down computer is easier.

7. People Don’t Hate Self-Service
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8. People Like to be Empowered
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9. • ATMs – Haven’t evolved much
• NOT attractive or highly branded
• They can cost you money!
• NOT well-designed
– Language choice every time
Automation People Like… Why?
– Language choice every time
– Doesn’t learn my behavior
– Sometimes bugs me with ads
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10. • One ATM similar to the next
• High exposure – ATMs are
everywhere
• Sets clear expectations
• People make a choice to use it
Learning from the ATM
• They know it will be faster than
talking to a human
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11. • Automation is imposed on the user
• Constrained nature of interface
• System is simulating uniquely human behavior
Three Fundamental Challenges with IVR
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• System is simulating uniquely human behavior

12. IVR imposes itself on the caller
• Starting on the wrong note….
• Humans are seldom given a choice with IVRs
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13. Constrained nature of VUI
• Time linear
– You must patiently listen
to one word before you
can hear the one that
follows it
• Unidirectional
– When you hear
something, you can’t
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something, you can’t
easily go back and listen
to it again
• Non-visible
– You can't easily figure
out where precisely you
are in the interaction and
what exactly the system
expects you to do next

14. Simulating Human Behavior
Spoken language interaction is charged with meaning
• Disrespect
• Inconsistency
• Thoughtlessness
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• Thoughtlessness

15. Disrespect….
• Space: verbose prompts
• Freedom: not letting them get to human
• Truth: lying to them about getting to a human
• Responsibility: blaming them for failure
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16. Inconsistency….
• In language
• In voice
• In modality
• Across menus
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17. Thoughtlessness….
• Who is the caller?
• What does the caller like?
• What does the caller know?
• What does the caller want?
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• How is the caller feeling?

18. 11/26/201018

19. • Calling retail store phone number on a Sunday afternoon
• They made a purchase two days ago
• It is afternoon, they called two hours ago about a trouble ticket. The
ticket was originally opened the day before. The ticket is not
resolved yet
• 80% of the caller’s calls are about getting account balance
Some Scenarios
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• Calling the power company after a power outage
• 75% of callers were at web before going to IVR
• Caller has a history of zero-ing out immediately
• Caller gave poor marks to the last agent they spoke with
• ISP service went down 10 minutes ago….

20. DesignTesting
Design
Dev
Testing
The Caller First Philosophy
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Caller First
Dev
Caller Last

21. Traditional IVR Build Process vs.
Caller First Iterative Approach
Develop
Deploy
Test
Define
Build
TestRefine
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Measure
Review
REPEAT!
Measure
Traditional IVR means millions in up front
investment and months of deployment,
testing, and getting it wrong…
Angel’s Site Builder enables iterations in days vs.
months, enabling organizations to focus on strategic
aspects of business and successively getting it right…

22. • Reduced deployment times and costs
• Real-time updates and changes to
voice applications
• Iterative fine-tuning and testing of voice
applications
Rapid Voice Application Development
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applications
• Easy integration with backend systems
and data
• Full transparency; Site Builder is used
by Angel Professional Services,
partners, and customers alike

23. • Requirements Gathering and Analysis
Understand the problems that need to be solved, and know the calling population that will be
using the applications
– Conduct expert review of existing functionality
– Listen to live calls in the call center, debrief with live agents
• Uncover pain points and monotonous calls
• Listen for terminology used
The Design Process: Step 1
• Understand why agents “say it that way”
– Interview key stakeholders about the underlying business objectives
• Brand considerations
• Legal considerations
– Match business goals with caller goals
– Identify available customer data to drive interactions
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Angel gains enough knowledge about your business to apply our creativity,
prior experience, and best practices to designing the right application.

24. • High Level Design
Convey the design vision for the application in a format that can be easily socialized throughout
the client organization.
– Provide a complete set of call flow diagrams
• Microsoft Visio diagrams
• Every “page” or step in the application depicted
• Connectors to show what callers say to navigate to the next step
– Create a representative set of sample calls
The Design Process: Step 2
– Create a representative set of sample calls
• Show what a typical call to the application would sound like
• “System says…” “Caller says…”
• Show the actual language that the application will use
• Illustrate the most common paths through the application
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High-level design: Allows Angel to convey our vision to customers, and
allows customers to socialize our vision amongst their team.

25. • Detailed Design
Add the final level of detail to the high level design once the overall vision is agreed upon.
– Provide a detailed design document
• Separate set of prompts for every block in the call flow diagrams
• Show every prompt needed to support the design
• All no-match prompts, no-input prompts transfer prompts, etc.
• Final recording list is generated from this spreadsheet
The Design Process: Step 3
• Final recording list is generated from this spreadsheet
• Every word must have a purpose!
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Detailed Design: Everything the developer needs to build the application
using the Site Builder toolkit.

26. • Audio Production
Create a full set of recorded prompts for the application.
– Choose voice talent to represent the brand
– Coach voice talent to convey meaning/persona
– Record all prompts needed for a complete application
• Application prompts (text from detailed design doc)
• All prompts for information play out (digit strings, dates, currency)
The Design Process: Step 4
• All prompts for information play out (digit strings, dates, currency)
• Any non-speech audio (audio icons, branded audio)
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Angel designers work with voice talents to ensure that our carefully crafted
prompts are conveyed accurately, while extending your company’s brand.

27. • Call Analysis
Post deployment: Observe the application in action to measure and improve success rates
– Quantitative analysis – how are callers using it?
• Usage statistics
• Most common failure points
• Containment rates
– Qualitative analysis – full call recordings
The Design Process: Step 5
– Qualitative analysis – full call recordings
• Design listens to recorded calls (both sides of the conversation)
• Measure success rates (Did they accomplish their task?)
• Identify areas for improvement
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The tuning phase gives us a chance to iterate on the original design and
improve the application.

28. Data is Key….
• Data about the callers
• Data about the application
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29. • User Profile
• Recent User Activity
• Call Initiation Context
• Call Population Distribution
Data Connectivity
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30. • Value to the Enterprise
• Experience using the system
• Disposition towards using the system
• Age/Gender
User Profile
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• Age/Gender
• Language
• Emotional state

31. • Past reasons for calling
• Resolution outcome of last
transaction
• Agent spoken with last time
Recent Call Activity
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• Agent spoken with last time
• How long they waited last time?
• Were they satisfied with call
outcome?

32. • Where are they calling from (zip
code, area code, lat-long)
• What medium are they using: land
line, cell, desktop (e.g., Skype)
• Calling into a number that was
Call Initiation Context
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• Calling into a number that was
advertised in a billboard, web site,
billing slip, TV/Radio commercial
• Calling from noisy train station

33. • Most frequent requests
across caller population
• Request distribution across
profiles
• Time-sensitive requests
Call Population Distribution
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• Time-sensitive requests
• Event-triggered requests
• Call context distribution
across callers: most callers
were in web?

34. Data About the Application
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• Automation rates
• Hang ups
• No input/No match
• Zero outs
• Long calls
• Short calls

35. Screen shot of Call Volume (showing peaks)
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36. Intelligent behavior….
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Intelligent behavior….

37. • Avoid “Main Menu”
– “Are you calling to change your address?”
• When you provide a menu, order options
intelligently
Informed First Option Offering
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• When you provide a menu, keep list to 3
items

38. • Don’t offer nonsensical options:
– New prospect being offered option to talk to billing
• Offer options the caller cares about:
– Telling callers with a large checking account balance about the
newly launched high-yield CD
– Over draft protection for callers with a dangerously low balance
Offer Only Relevant Options
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– Over draft protection for callers with a dangerously low balance

39. • Event triggered
• Most recent action
Volunteering Relevant Information
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• Most likely across callers: the 80/20 rule

40. Wording, Pacing, and Persona
• No more and no less than what needs to be said
• Slow down or speed up prompt pace
• Right persona for right profile
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41. • Unhappy Callers
• VIP Callers
Bump Up Caller Queue Priority
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• VIP Callers

42. • Caller is probably irritated or
unhappy, in distress
• Caller has a history of doing
badly with the application
Bypass Automation
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badly with the application
• Caller is calling from a noisy
environment

43. • Knows who you are…
• Caters to your preferences…
A Caller FirstSM
IVR:
Putting the Caller FirstSM
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Kate, your
anniversary is
next week.
Send a gift?
888-692-6435
• Anticipates your needs…
• Serves you fast!
• Respects your time…

44. Thanks for joining us. After the webinar
you will each receive the Angel White
Paper: “Driving Performance with
Embedded BI in Your Voice Application”
Q & A
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Ahmed Bouzid
Director of Product
bouzid@angel.com
888-662-4955
Q & ASchedule a Demo:
http://www.angel.com/schedule-demo.jsp