Solution to gethuman standard - making it really work with Guided Self-Service

In an article by Ian Jacobs (Analyst at Frost & Sullivan) titled, "Gethuman? Get Real." on DestinationCRM (read original here), he asserts that all callers should not be treated equally. His argument is based on the "Core Principals" that define the GetHuman standard for handling callers in a call center.

Ian writes,

"If companies treat every customer equally, customers are actually the ones who suffer in the long run. Companies that do not treat their preeminent customers better than the workaday customers will soon lose those more profitable customers, and that would be the start of a downward trend."

I agree with Ian, that if companies are going to stick with old technology and ideas then they are forced to meet out service in this way. However, if a company truly wants to be competetive, then they should make every effort to seek out new ideas and methods to lure customers away from competitors who stick with old ideas.

Let's take a look at the GetHuman core principals and talk about how new thinking and Spoken's Guided technology can actually provide a great customer experience for all customers:

GETHUMAN PRINCIPALS and HOW TO MAKE THEM WORK IN A CALL CENTER

• Humans first - In cases where a human is available, a human should quickly answer the call and determine the caller's need. If appropriate, the human can offer a self-service option to accomplish tasks and thereby merely act as a natural language interface to the system's Main Menu. Callers who prefer to use automation will elect to do so. Those requiring or otherwise preferring human assistance will have it.

How to make this work: Use a Guided Self-Service option. In Guided Self-Service every call, by definition, is answered and monitored by a human. The human just happens to be totally aided by automation, but they still have control over the call. So, you could answer every call with "How may I help you?" and have the combination of automation and human get the caller to the right place every time.

• Make it easy - The system should be so easy, convenient and efficient to use that people will willingly choose to use it. As a rule of thumb, such systems should permit the user to accomplish tasks faster than by interaction with a human.

How to make this work: Have you ever given your credit card numer to a live agent who wasn't paying attention? My record for repeating my credit card number is 4 times to a live agent. If you tell a machine the "accurate" information once and the combination of technology and human agent assistance will get it right every time, without re-prompting the customer. Also, it is easier to just talk naturally, so Guided system allows natural speech, un-constrained sentences - since there is a live agent to provide context to the automation.

• Efficient prompts - No prompt content should be included unless it improves efficiency of task completion for the user. "Legalese" should not be included unless it is absolutely required by law. Cliché phrases, which have become meaningless to consumers due to overuse and lack of trust of phone systems, should be avoided. Examples include: "Your call is important to us." "Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed." "You can access our website to answer most questions."

How to make this work: The easiest way to ask a question is to mimic a live agent. Live agents know the best way to get the information they are looking for. Automation systems by themselves cannot handle open ended replies from callers very well. In a Guided environment all the responses have a live agent backup to provide help.

• Systems are not humans - Automated systems that try to sound human can be patronizing to consumers. When a consumer calls with a serious issue, they do not want to be greeted by overly friendly and cheery personas. Avoid using personas such as these that will annoy callers.

How to make this work: Using a Guided approach allows for a smoother interaction, because it just "gets it". This can be used with or without a persona.

• Listen to your customers - Regularly survey users on call quality. Respond to frequently heard complaints in a public, visible forum, indicating what you are changing to address the frustration. Organizations should use this data to trend improvement over time, to bonus call center executives, to impact support representatives' compensation and training, and to benchmark against the industry.

How to make this work: The Guided approach allows you to listen to customers in real-time, fix their problems, and provide feedback to the system on what should be fixed so it doesn't happen again.

• Logical flow - Self-service applications should have logical flow. For example, it is unacceptable to obtain a caller's account number, and then ask if he/she would like to open an account.

How to make this work: Live call scripts are very good and have been optimized over thousands of calls. A Guided approach allows an organization to just use the best parts of live scripts to handle calls, since each call has a live attendant when needed to provide help.