IVR Blog

Angel.com Fall ‘09 Release - Featuring Caller First Diagnostics

2009-10-14T14:46:05Z

This past weekend Angel.com’s latest product release, dubbed “Fall ‘09″, was made available to all customers. This is the latest in this years string of major releases. Earlier this year we focused on upgrades for our Virtual Call Center product, giving more insight to supervisors and visibility for agents, increased call transfer control, and enhancing the security and stability of our platform.

Our latest release is the first wave of enhancements meant to put the caller first^SM. This is the first in a string of 3 releases over the next 4 months, with the goal throughout all of them being to aid businesses in building and managing better IVR and call center solutions that will provide a better experience to their callers/customers.

The most exciting portion of this release is our Caller First^SM Diagnostics tool. This tool, while it looks simple, is extremely powerful in creating and managing an IVR solution. Throughout the building and management lifecycle, Angel.com customers can run this diagnostics tool to help identify potential issues, such as broken links, orphaned files within the call flow, missing audio prompts, and places where a TTS (text-to-speech) prompt may still reside instead of an audio file. Now you can identify potential issues in the IVR solution before your customers do. Anyone who has gone through the tedious and extensive process of calling into a recently built IVR solution to test and identify where the call flow is broken knows how beneficial it would be to have an automated testing tool to handle this. In addition, the Caller First Diagnostics tool allows you to build your IVR or call center solution completely with TTS prompts, crafting each prompt in text, before recording the prompts with professional voice talent. When you are done crafting, simply run the Diagnostics tool, and it will generate an exportable Excel file with every TTS prompt and it’s proper placement within the Voice Site. This is a huge time-savings tool.

In the Fall ‘09 Release, we also put up the structural basis for our future Enterprise Reporting Suite release. This will be a major shift in the way our customers can compile and report on data within their IVR and call center solutions.

The Following are additional features and functionality from our Fall ‘09 Release:

More than double the number of Hang-Up pages. We’ve expanded the number of hang-up pages from 2 to 5 to enable a larger number of available actions and options after a call completes.

Generate random values with Logic Pages. Easily generate confirmation numbers or randomize application processes. With our latest release, random values can automatically be assigned to a variable in alpha string, number, alpha-numeric string, or number string.

Angel.com reporting enhancements. We’ve updated our reporting functionality, providing you access to double the web results displayed on all reports, improved Call Analyzer performance, and the ability to view call variables from the Call History Report.

Stay tuned for more updates over the coming month!

Angel.com Manages the Caller Registration for “Notify NYC” — IVR/SMS App for a City-Wide Citizen Warning System

2009-07-15T17:59:17Z

Today, Angel.com issued a press release highlighting the company’s participation in the city-wide launch of the Notify NYC Program. The Notify NYC Program is a citizen warning system that was created to enhance New York City’s public communication channels by distributing critical text and voice messages directly via the Web, e-mail and SMS text messages. Angel.com will manage the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to streamline the registration process for those who want to receive notifications from the City and also facilitate internal communications amongst City employees and work groups.

“Notify NYC gives people a chance to prepare for emergencies before they actually happen. By using Angel.com’s IVR technology, callers can easily become a part of this program so they can be automatically informed of any critical event.”

This is an amazing program that we can see being rolled out in a number of cities across the US. While residents can register for Notify NYC online, the IVR registration line allows people to immediately sign up for this program wherever they hear about it. This is one of the biggest benefits of such phone-based IVR applications — it brings immediacy to all consumers. The likelihood that resident of NYC will only hear about this program while sitting at home with their laptop, or at work while a computer is handy is slim. The IVR registration allows residents who hear about this while reading the paper on the subway, or from a friend at the local coffee shop to immediately dial 3-1-1 and register on the spot, before they forget about it as they go about their day.

For speed and simplicity sake, entering a telephone number and a zip code is all that is required for registrants to receive notifications in case of emergencies. Multiple account management features enable registrants to add, change or remove additional phone numbers, zip codes and notification types.

Angel.com Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-05 — Follow Twitter.com/angeldotcom

2009-06-05T11:00:00Z

Angel.com customer announced as CIO 100 Winner. Kudos! Call center, screen pops, $$ savings and more. http://bit.ly/MGz2C #
@FitnessConcepts Nice work, glad it’s working for you! Direct link to the virtual receptionist is http://www.angel.com/vr. in reply to FitnessConcepts #
Research shows giving choice of keying or speaking responses in IVR survey increases likelihood they’ll take survey http://bit.ly/fsie1 #

Is “Cloud” (as in Cloud Telephony) Just Another Buzz Word, Or More?

2009-05-29T18:55:41Z

Cloud. I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately, and I mean a lot! Cloud telephony, service cloud, sales cloud, cloud computing, SaaS cloud, telephony in the cloud… the list goes on. But what does that really mean? I’ve been putting the Angel.com logo in a cloud icon in PowerPoint presentations for years (hence the image)… does that mean we were the original cloud telephony provider, or the revolutionaries in the cloud space?

The first big place I really ran face first into the “cloud” world was at Dreamforce 2008. Salesforce.com used “cloud” in all their banners, and even hired people to walk around San Francisco with giant inflated cloud balloons tethered to their backs. And since that time, salesforce has rolled the cloud theme into everything they do, including the main headings on their website.

Lately, there has been an explosion of the use of “cloud” in our space — that being telephony (IVR, call center, etc.) – with the likes of Twilio, Tropo and Cloudvox most directly, and Voxeo, IfByPhone, etc. in subtext. The notion that cloud represents is, to boil it down as I see it, the ability to access any solution you want, from any where you want, at any time you want — not being tied to hardware or installed software somewhere — and the ability to easily intermingle different types of solutions so everything works in conjunction. I’m sure there are better definitions out there, and I may just be plain wrong in mine, so feel free to add your definition in the comment section.

Dave Michels gives some interesting commentary on all of this on his Pin Drop Soup blog… “powerful cloud based tools for voice enabling web applications.” Let’s see… does Angel.com fit the cloud mold:

Hosted service that can be accessed/managed from any web browser any where — CHECK
API to connect voice to any web service — CHECK (had web service stuff for years)
Fully integrated with other cloud services such as CRM, workforce management, payment gateways, etc. — CHECK (again, had this for years)
Internal/external database integration — CHECK (years again)
Cool customer integrations that make use of mobile apps and other ‘hot topic’ things — CHECK

What else do we need to be “cloud certified”? All this and you don’t need a programming degree to do it (we have a nifty GUI that does all the code for you.)

But, with all that, I have to ask… Is “cloud” here to stay, or is it the “maverick” of 2009? Seems like “Voice 2.0″ was replaced by “cloud telephony” within a year, so what will next years buzz word be!? “Angel” and “cloud” go hand in hand, so I guess I’ll throw our hat into the cloud ring too.

###

, , , ,

Angel.com Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-15 — Follow Twitter.com/angeldotcom

2009-05-15T11:00:00Z

Angel.com article on Call Center Times website — Putting The Caller First: Effective IVR Design for Your Call Center http://bit.ly/StmfX #
New (well, April) Gartner research predicts 75 percent of contact centers will be running a SaaS application by 2013. #
Added a new RSS feed to our mix… the Angel.com IVR Wiki/Knowledgebase… http://feeds2.feedburner.com/IVRWikiUpdates #
@dunwoods Angel.com can handle all of this…hosted IVR provider with SMS and web survey integrations. http://bit.ly/9nFhZ or 888-692-6435 #

Angel.com Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-08 — Follow Twitter.com/angeldotcom

2009-05-08T11:00:00Z

Frost & Sullivan eBroadcast on “golden nugget” tips for contact center professionals… http://bit.ly/WfwbA #
RT @SpeechTech: Latest STM News: Angel.com Releases Spring Forward http://bit.ly/eSzR0 #
Angel.com Virtual Receptionist mentioned on WSJ SmartMoney — “make a small business look bigger” — http://bit.ly/j4dda #
Press Release on Angel.com Spring Release: “Spring Forward makes it easier for businesses to “put the caller first” — http://bit.ly/swJGH #
RT @tmcnet: Angel.com’s Site Builder Toolkit Lets Novices Design, Deploy and Manage a Customized IVR System http://tmcnet.com/7668.1 #
RT @tmcnet: Angel.com ‘Springs Forward’ with New IVR Enhancements http://tmcnet.com/7761.1 #
Angel.com’s President, Dave Rennyson featured in The Washington Post “New at the Top” Section — http://bit.ly/qQ5b5 #
Angel.com 2009 Spring Forward Release is here! Learn more about how it helps you “put the caller first” — http://bit.ly/xo1DI #
Great article and case study on Angel.com customer Lifebooker, and Outbound IVR on Speechtechmag.com today… http://bit.ly/XPQiF #
General article about Angel.com’s Site Builder tool on TMCnet today … http://bit.ly/Nh8N1 #

Angel.com “Spring Forward” Release - Designed to ‘Put the Caller First’

2009-05-07T15:38:26Z

We put out our Spring Release 2009 this past weekend. Aptly named “Spring Forward” because it was designed to address some major features our customers were asking for as well as propel our platform toward even more major releases due later this year.

But the crux of the release was based around our desire to “put the caller first” in everything, and every voice solution, we do and build. What does this mean? Well, in the words of Dave Rennyson (President, Angel.com):

“We’re using this phrase ‘putting the caller first’ because if we put the caller first—for our direct customers—and we help them build better IVRs, we help the industry, we help people build better applications, and we help ensure that their customers are served better.”

For more information on our Spring Forward Release, please visit the following pages:

Spring Forward Press Release >>

Spring Forward Announcement >>

Spring Forward Interview with Dave Rennyson in Speech Technology Magazine >>

Simple editing of WAV files for your Angel.com phone system

2009-05-05T18:15:39Z

Tips on handling sound files with your Angel.com account:

1. Because you can have “extra” phone numbers in your account for only a minimal charge, put one of them to regular use with your own staff:

running a development copy of your voice site before you release the changes to the public on your main number(s)
having a place to test changes
playing with and learning more features of SiteBuilder!

2. Test new and old phrase recordings yourself, over the phone; not only on your computer. Put them into a simple greeting page or question page on a test site, in your own Angel account, and listen through them all for tone and pacing. Be sure your phrases make the intended effect and are intelligible over a variety of phones and situations:

conventional phone in a noisy room
cell phone from a vehicle
speakerphone
cell phone from an area with bad service
caller distracted by something else, not paying 100% attention to your Angel application!

3. Some audio editing tasks are very easy: such as cutting off unwanted space, taking out a few words, adding a bit more breathing space between clauses, adjusting volume, or cloning half a sentence from another prompt. Excellent free editing tools are:

Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) for editing WAV files
Switch ( http://www.nch.com.au/switch/ ) for converting sound files to various formats

Rather than requesting fresh recordings (usually 5 to 10 business days) where recycled or slightly adjusted phrases would be sufficient…do it yourself with these tools! It is fun, and you might be able to deliver good results in 15 minutes, for free.

4. Run every set of recordings through Switch to be sure they are in the correct format, and optimized for best sound on your Angel.com phone system. If phrases sound static-y on the phone, wrong formatting is probably the culprit. Here are the proper settings:

Output Format / Wave Encoder Option: PCM Uncompressed, 8000 Hz, 16 bits, Mono
Options/Conversions tab, Audio Processing: Normalize files when converting, with peak level = 70%

5. Whether it’s an IVR system, a musical performance, telling a joke, or getting a child’s attention: timing is extremely important in the delivery. Your chief weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…no, strike that, your chief weapon for IVR is a short silence.

Using Audacity, make a set of three “spacer” sound files that are nothing but silence, with lengths 500 milliseconds, 1000, and 2000. Use these silences throughout your Angel.com voice site wherever a short pause would make your system’s delivery more easily understandable to your callers:

Before or after pronouncing data from a variable
Wherever you especially want the caller to pay attention to the phrase that comes next (grab the attention with a second of silence)
Wherever you want to give the callers a moment to think about or process what you just told them, such as a phone number or URL you want them to write down
At the beginning of a menu (1 second of silence is much more effective than inserting any cliched message begging for attention “as our menus have changed”)
Between the options within a menu, giving a moment where the callers can decide if that’s the one they want
Wherever the topic of your presentation is changing, such as a paragraph break within a Frequently Asked Questions message
More!

Angel.com Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-01 — Follow Twitter.com/angeldotcom

2009-05-29T19:13:06Z

Almost forgot… updated the design of the Angel.com IVR blog a few days ago… http://bit.ly/FxMwK Let us know what you think. #
Angel.com’s Spring Forward Release is coming this weekend! Stay tuned for more… #
Ahmed Bouzid currently speaking at Parafest: “Best of Both World’s” - How to Seamlessly Integrate telephone IVR with Parature Software. #
On our way to Parafest. Join Angel.com in the Solutions Center for a demo. Learn more about phone-enabling Parature http://bit.ly/Sy8ho #
Just returned from awards banquet at UNC Chapel Hill. The exemplary university IT help desk in North Carolina, using Angel.com of course! #
http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com. Lets anyone create a streaming audio show from their phone that in turn can be heard online or by phone. Cool! #
And while on the LinkedIn Groups topic… VUI group started by our own VUI Evangelist Ahmed Bouzid — http://bit.ly/Y01Hn #
LinkedIn SaaS Group, in case you haven’t seen it. Good discussions of SaaS technologies and how people are using them– http://bit.ly/ZsOEc #

Gain “confidence” in your callers – A “Put the Caller First” Feature Showcase

2009-04-08T13:24:53Z

I just returned to Angel.com after a 3-year Sabbatical that took me to Wharton, among other places…. In the interim, Angel.com has come out with some cool features that help the VUI designer “Put the caller first”.

So, I took it upon myself as my mission to understand how our product and services provide the capabilities to truly “Put the Caller First”. A client developer of ours made the following comment in an email about a product gap: “No ‘Confirm If-Necessary’ ability. Most speech offerings allow apps to confirm if the confidence level comes back in a middle zone between rejecting and accepting the utterance. For [Client A], we either have to set a page to confirm always, or risk false accepts, which will eventually cause a concern.”The truth of the matter is we do have this ability, but it’s just buried within the application on our “Question Pages”! Which lead inevitably and inexorably to an educational feature series that I will be forming around enabling our users to “Put the Caller First”.

Angel applications have an ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) setting called confidence level set to .45 (or 45%) which means that the application assigns a confidence level to everything a caller says to it and accepts responses that it is at least 45% confident it knows what you have said.

Imagine if you are in a noisy room, and someone responds to a question that you ask and you are not sure you heard them correctly – you would subconsciously assign a confidence level to what you heard, and may ask them to repeat what they said. However instead of asking them to repeat what they said, you may just say, “I heard you say [response], is that right?” building confidence in them that you are actively listening.

Angel has the ability to do this through the use of adjusting the confidence level, turning on confirmation, and finally adjusting the confidence threshold. This is by default set at 1 when you turn on confirmation making everything confirmed regardless of how confident you are in the response.

Below is a simple guide on how to do this:

In this example we have an app where getting the response right is important but not 100% critical, and quality of the experience by speed is equally important. If we are 75%+ confident in the response we just accept it and move on. We only reject the response when we are less than 25% confident, forcing them to a no-match error. Finally between 25-75% confidence, we politely let them know what we think they asked for, and ask them to confirm or deny that. Here we are “Putting the Caller First”.

In the future we will be exploring ways to capture confidence levels into variables to enable creative things (i.e. cool things with logic pages, improved customer analysis and tuning through enterprise reporting, etc).

The IVR Poll Nailed It

2008-11-06T22:21:18Z

Following up on my IVR polling post from August, I wanted to mention that Rasmussen polls, who use IVR to collect their data, tied with Pew Research as the most accurate pollster for the 2008 general election. And though the ‘Bradley effect’ was certainly a concern with pollsters, it wasn’t a concern for Scott Rasmussen who was quoted in a USA Today article, “If people aren’t going to vote for an African American, they’ll tell us.”

Yes, because ‘us’ is a machine.

Hosted Outbound IVR Market to Expect Massive Growth

2008-10-07T12:21:58Z

This report has been out a few weeks but definitely worth a late mention.

According to Datamonitor, the North American market for hosted outbound IVR is set to grow from an estimated $213 million in 2008 to $524 million by 2013. Spending is expected to increase at a rate of 20% per year for the next five years as organizations adopt automated outbound calling to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction.

More Evidence SaaS IVR and Call Center Implementations Save Businesses Money

2008-10-06T19:56:44Z

From CIO magazine’s “Advice & Opinion” section:“While premises-based systems require large upfront capital investments and periodic upgrades, (not to mention time-consuming development and change request cycles) hosted systems’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) model involves a low up-front investment, and pay-for-performance pricing. According to McKinsey & Company, economics favor a hosted model over CPE-based IVR, even when ongoing costs are calculated. The firm estimates the traditional “do-it-yourself” model has a productivity of 60-70 cents to the dollar, while the SaaS-enabled model has a productivity of 20-30 cents on the dollar – a 50 to 70 percent improvement. The Yankee Group concurs, reporting that savings can range from 28-45% for organizations that choose a hosted call center solution.”

How’s the front door?

2008-09-22T00:25:18Z

How’s the front door of your company’s phone presence in the world?

Here’s a useful little test. Every week, assign two or three people from your own company to call into your own phone line. Not the same people every week. Rotate it.

Take notes on the total user experience.

If there was a transfer to an agent, how long did it take?

Were there any obvious problems with the automated prompts that could be fixed with a common-sense approach? Or, any more profound problems that might require some consulting? (It is your company’s own front door, on the phone, so things “should” run correctly!)

If your own CEO leaves a voicemail message in the company’s system, how long does it take for the promised callback?

Did the call get dropped at any weird place?

Was there anything that a brand-new customer, or a potential customer, would find confusing or off-putting?

The customers might not be able to report problems to you, and might not bother to do so. Competitors certainly won’t.

Have fun! Break your own system and find any problems before your customers do!

Awkward phrases in the auto-attendant

2008-09-17T12:28:39Z

Does your phone attendant have any of these greatest hits?

“Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.” — Who knew? Who memorized them? Who even cared, beyond the company serving them up? What’s the punishment if the caller doesn’t listen? Put yourself into a restaurant where your waitress says: “Please listen carefully, as our salad dressing options have changed. For House, press 1. For Ranch, press 2. For French, press 3. For Poppy Seed, press 4. For Vinaigrette, press 5.” No tip for you, one year! (And is that House dressing flavored like bricks, wood, or is it musty carpet? If you don’t give me any clues what it tastes like, but just give me your own cryptic keyword or title, how can I make any intelligent choice for or against it?)

Convoluted, impenetrable, obfuscatory, constipated bureaucratic verbiage – please just don’t. Your company wants me off the phone, quickly. I want to be served quickly, and off the phone. We’re in this together. Give me straightforward choices where I don’t have to use my doctorate to figure out the sentences. Prompt me with English at a third-grade reading level, no higher. I’m not looking at your sentences on paper; I’m hearing them sequentially on the phone (like a radio broadcast), and I can’t fast-forward with my eyes or ears. Keep it simple.

Three nouns in a row, or three adjectives in a row, on the phone. – Please prompt me with one noun and one verb. Please greet me with one noun. If you really have to add all that detail, put it into a second clause or sentence after the greeting…and you might realize that it’s expendable. Don’t welcome me to “the state welfare agency support line office locator”, where five other nouns modify the truly important nouns: “office locator”. (Truly important: what can this system do for me as the caller?) It evidently belongs to the “state welfare agency”. It’s probably a “support line” of some sort, by inference, since I’m calling it.

“Momentarily” and “shortly” – um, don’t you mean “soon”? The word “momentarily” really means “only for a [fleeting] moment”; will the company representative speak in a blip and be gone? “Shortly” takes twice as long to say as “soon”. Get the junk out of there, and not a moment too soon. Everybody knows that the agent will probably not be with them imminently, whether the system is trying to reassure them in that direction or not.

“Your call is important to us, so please stay on the line.” – What, you pulled me off the easily ignorable hold music just to tell me that you still don’t have a capable person available to pick up my call? I put the phone back to my ear on hearing a voice, only to be told that I’m really still on hold for the indefinite future? And that the company would rather have me wait forever on my own time/initiative than to bother any of their people? If my call is important, if my time as your customer is in any way valuable, how about at least offering me a chance to leave a message now so the company can call me back on their time?

“For information on blah blah blah, press 1.” I press 1, and then it says, “For information on blah blah blah, please call:” and then a different company name and their phone number! – Now, why did the first prompt lead me to believe I’d find information here on this call? Please don’t make it the customer’s problem when merged companies can’t get their own acts together into a well-organized presentation.

“Eastern Standard Time”, as in: “Our business hours are 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time” – this almost sounds OK…but it’s wrong for half the year. Are you going to change your automated system every six months so it correctly says “Eastern Daylight Saving Time” when appropriate? How about just saying “Eastern Time”, leaving it that way all the time, and being done?

“Seven days a week” – strike that. “Every day.”

“If you know your party’s extension, enter it now.” – I was invited to an extended party? Cool! Didn’t party lines on the phone go out sometime in the mid-1970s? Why is this mock formal operator-ese, “your party”, still with us? I’m calling the company to contact either a person or a department (or division). How about: “If you know the phone extension of the person you’re calling, enter it now.”

“Visit us on the web at w-w-w, blah-blah-blah-blah” before the caller gets to make any choice. – No. Please, no. I called your company on the phone because your web site already didn’t give me what I needed. I got your phone number from the web site, and I’m calling to follow up with a person or department on something I specifically need. An automated phone call shouldn’t beg me to hang up right now and go away, even if that’s what (judging by behavior) the company really does want. Furthermore, I’m not going to have a pen and paper handy to jot down your web address anyway, so why are you wasting my time with it?

“Please press” with every number, where the repeated “please” gets annoying. — It’s false politeness. We’re already dealing with a machine instead of a human. The “please” just sounds formulaic instead of sincere. Please please please PLEEZZE PLEEEEEZZZZE condescend to push my buttons, saith the computer.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that.” – There is a separate essay about this stinker. In summary: a computer is never sorry, and computers actually have less empathy (and inspire less empathy) than road kill does. I don’t want to hear a computer apologize about its own inadequacies to serve me; I just want to be served through simple and direct questions about my needs, so I can follow the instructions and be done.

“For all other questions, including fruit bats and breakfast cereals, press 5.” – Look, doesn’t “all other questions” already catch everything I could possibly be calling about? Why do the fruit bats and breakfast cereals need to be mentioned? If they’re that important, shouldn’t they be their own options, and make the catch-all category be 6 or 7? A pretty good rule of thumb is: a prompted option should probably never have the word “including” in it. Even if you’re going to send options 5, 6, and 7 all to the same agent who handles “general” stuff, perhaps you could at least log or whisper the choice separately…and give less frustration to the caller hearing the menu, too. “All other” means all other.

“For general information, press 1. For information about dingo’s kidneys, press 2….” – Why is my “general” option in front of the list of specific options? I don’t feel like listening all the way through the menu, to decide if I should have pressed 1 a long time ago.

“We are currently assisting other customers. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” – If it has to say anything there, how about: “Please hold on, and someone will speak with you as soon as possible. Our people are still helping other earlier callers.” ?

“For more information, call 847-273-7502 during regular business hours. Thank you.” – Impossible. I have no warning that a phone number is going to be blurted in my general direction, no opportunity to write it down (even if I wanted to), and no information on their regular business hours…whoever it is.

There are easy ways around all of these problems. Just think each of them through from the perspective of a caller who knows nothing about your company.

More to come. See also a very long list of ideas….