Phone Self-Service: A New Proposed Standard from GetHuman.com
August 28, 2006
This article picks up from where we left off on the subject explored in a previous column entitled "Phone Self-Service Gets Human Assist." Here, I would like to discuss a current standard initiative by a non-profit organization called gethuman and an associated interview with Walt Tetschner, who is editor and publisher of an industry newsletter on automated speech recognition (ASR), ASR News.
The creation of new standard
At a recent conference in New York earlier this month, Paul English, the founder of GetHuman.com, announced in his keynote address the creation of a new "GetHuman Standard" for customer service phone systems. Microsoft and Nuance are working with Mr. English, and other companies are expected to join.
The gethuman project is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the U.S. The proposed standard includes an audible tone or “earcon” to signal that an IVR application adheres to the gethuman standard.
Preliminary standard and request for comments
You can get more information by visiting their site at www.gethuman.com. There is a preliminary document which currently itemizes 10 basic standards. As of this writing, the top 5 listed are:
- If a human operator is available when a consumer calls, the human should answer the phone.
- When a human is not available to answer the call, the caller must always be able to dial 0 or to say "operator" at the top level menu to queue for a human.
- Estimated wait time should always be given, with updated estimate every few minutes during hold time.
- Do not ever make a caller repeat any info provided during a call.
- Callers should always be offered the option to be called back, for times when there is a long wait for human operator. For long holds, offer this option about every five minutes.
There are also standards listed for the time a user is holding, and some things that are not allowed in order to adhere to the standard.
After a comment period of 60 days, the gethuman project team will incorporate community feedback to the standards and publish a final design document. Companies can then register their gethuman-compliant phone service at www.gethuman.com and begin to adopt the gethuman "earcon."
Discussion with Walt Tetschner of ASR News
As an acknowledged independent expert and long time associate in the voice processing industry (which basically covers applications such as voice mail, auto-attendant and IVR) Walt Tetschner (www.asrnews.com) was the natural next step in my getting to know more on what was happening with the gethuman standard. I was not surprised to find that Mr. English had consulted with Walt regarding this initiative.
Walt and I discussed some parallels with other initiatives including the Voice Mail User Interface Forum (VMUIF), part of the Information Industry Association where a number of vendors had conferred on a standard for a telephone user interface (TUI) for automated attendants and voice mail. The TUI was based on touch-tones since ASR was not yet being deployed. The final draft was completed in April of 1990. Unfortunately there was no consensus in applying this standard, in part because the vendors perceived their unique user interface as a competitive differentiator. Although there are both common and different service elements with voice messaging and self-service (such as answering a call versus being inside the voice mailbox or a custom self-service application and performing related tasks) there was an attempt to standardize on universal functions. For VMUIF these included, among many aspects of the specification the designation of keys on the phone: * = cancel or backup; 0 = Help or Operator; # = Terminate or Skip Ahead. # has since become commonly used to present additional application-specific options to the caller.
So far the gethuman standard has not attempted to define telephone keys, but instead is focusing on best practices from a user point of view. Walt pointed to three areas he believes is very important for the gethuman standard to be widely accepted:
- Actionable comments and feedback from many concerned parties with differing perspectives
- Broad support from vendors
- Numerous enterprises implementing the standard
The biggest obstacle he perceives is resistance to change. I found this to be true with some enterprise managers. I recently spoke to a group of VP-level executives about whether they thought the CEO should know how their IVR works. All replied that they felt that in their case the CEO should not be involved and they were satisfied with the way their system operated. When I called their system, the first prompt I heard was: “Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed!" For a variety of reasons, this in not a best practice and is also cited in the proposed gethuman standard as one of the phrases to avoid.
Walt and I both agree what is different and welcome about the gethuman standard initiative is that it was initially driven by the millions of users.
Complaints versus Rewards for Enterprises
gethuman will be publishing a list of the best and worst mass-market consumer companies in the U.S. based on how long it takes to get to a human on the phone and on the quality of support received.
Although it will be interesting to see these lists, I believe that there is more to this than meets the ear. As I wrote in an earlier article entitled "CXO: Chief Experience Officer," I maintain that what’s important to customers (and to enterprises implementing these self-service systems) is to satisfy a customer need or resolve a problem quickly and on the first contact whether that is through self-service, through an agent or a combination of the two.
Users want improved Customer Service
According to Tetschner, in addition to having the option to speak with an agent, the other main complaints are repeating information entered into the IVR system and menu structures and their content.
The message is clear from the gethuman community of over one million consumers that they want improvements in agent-assisted and customer self-service. Inherently, there is a difference between standards and best practices for phone self-service which need to be applied on an individual basis for each enterprise. Designing and implementing these applications is a work-in-process that needs to draw on both of these elements with the right mix of collaborative expertise and empowerment. There is no "one size fits all" scenario here, especially when it comes to implementing either or both touch-tone and speech recognition.
Ed LaBanca is President & Principal Analyst for CollabGen Inc. He works with CXO's, executives and department managers to improve communications and customer service in contact centers and across the enterprise. Consulting services include technology and applications audit, systems and process analysis, design, request for proposals, evaluations and project management.
