The Customer Service Survey
Foxes Guarding the Henhouse
Fri - March 24, 2006 12:38 PM in
In a conversation this week with a respected industry analyst, a topic came up I'd not thought much about before. Specifically, he commented that vendors of IVR and speech recognition for the customer service sector are unique in industry because they test their own creations for usability and caller satisfaction rather than have an independent review. His argument was that not having a quality assurance (QA) review separate from the design team was a significant reason mediocre applications are put in service.
That's a variation of our own experience showing that usability testing done by insiders (What we refer to as "Friends and Family" testing) commonly yields systems that perform below standard. Actually that's a more mild version as Peter wrote in his book Gourmet Customer Service: "Provides misleading data and an unwarranted sense of confidence that makes Friends and Family testing worse than not testing at all."
The simple truth is that insiders, employees and the application designers are just too close for objectivity. They can have a vested interest in the outcome, be too familiar with insider jargon that could confuse the outsider and more.
So while we agree with the comment of the analyst, the quality assurance step must also be objective, and if the QA team consists of insiders with the same blind spots as the designers; problem issues will still be missed.
Whether you are an IVR provider or a company installing self service technology; to truly deliver the best possible service to callers, an independent and objective performance evaluation is money well spent.
Posted by Rick Rappe
The simple truth is that insiders, employees and the application designers are just too close for objectivity. They can have a vested interest in the outcome, be too familiar with insider jargon that could confuse the outsider and more.
So while we agree with the comment of the analyst, the quality assurance step must also be objective, and if the QA team consists of insiders with the same blind spots as the designers; problem issues will still be missed.
Whether you are an IVR provider or a company installing self service technology; to truly deliver the best possible service to callers, an independent and objective performance evaluation is money well spent.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 12:38 PM | | | | |