The IVR Clinic with Allison Smith
Allison Smith August 9th, 2010
Allison Smith, The Asterisk Voice
The 15 Commandments of IVR
Commandment #5: “Front-Load Important Information”
I enjoy telling the story of the IVR I recently voiced for a large Cardiology consortium, with offices located across the Southern US. They, unfortunately, were guilty of violating #2 of the “15 Commandments of IVR – Thou Shalt Not Create Fake Mailboxes”, which meant they had about 15 options to choose from (most routing back to one or two basic points of contact) – way too many choices to force their patients to listen to.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read option #15: “If this is a medical emergency, hang up, and dial 911.” If someone was experiencing crushing chest pains and instead of calling for emergency help, they made the judgment call to ring up their primary care Cardiologist instead, (whose staff won’t be retrieving the message til the next morning) wouldn’t you want to set them straight sooner rather than later?
It is *critical* to offer the most important, time-sensitive, safety-related, and crucial information off the top of your phone menu. The popular line of thinking is that people need to hear the entire menu before making their choices; that they’ll just select the first option they hear, regardless of the urgency of their request or appropriateness of their selection, thus engaging the wrong call center agent or worse — abusing your “emergency” option.
It is *vital* that your client base have an emergency opt-in straight out of the gate – especially if your business functions in a medical capacity – or even if internet or network connectivity is at stake or essential services like power service is affected. If you offer a service in which consumers could have a dire or imminent need to reach someone immediately, you must offer an “escape hatch” as a first point of triaging calls. Many companies for which I’ve voiced have set up a dedicated extension strictly for emergency support situations – and warn of penalties and service call charges for those who are not entitled to use it – as a way of swiftly handling those issues requiring imminent attention and screening out those who don’t.
Give an emergency “fail-safe” escape hatch at the beginning; then, assign the mailbox options to be “top-heavy” – those most commonly-used or likely to be needed options off the top – and have them cascade down (in *five* options, max!) in likelihood of selection/importance. It will improve call sorting and efficiency on your end, and it will be a more humane method of handling your callers, vastly improving their experience in your call structure.
The next installment of this blog series “The 15 Commandments of IVR” is #6: “Understand What Constitutes a ‘Prompt”; an explanation of what exactly a “prompt” is – handy knowledge to have when ordering the recording of your IVR via the Digium site or directly through me.
Thanks for reading!
