The Customer Service Survey
Doing the Wrong Things Excellently
Wed - August 2, 2006 11:53 AM in
One of the difficulties in selling usability and customer satisfaction testing, particularly for automated self service customer care systems, is getting clients to understand that there are different test types depending on what answers are needed.
One variation on testing for technical performance is becoming increasingly important as self service systems advance in capability and also complexity. As callers progress through several layers of system prompts to accomplish their task, the number of options offered also increase, such as asking for a live operator at any stage, or finishing one task and needing to back up to accomplish another one. Traversal testing is the process of insuring that any action at any prompt does what it is supposed to.
Time and again we encounter systems that work fine technically, but that fail to meet caller needs. It is more often bad design, not faulty technical performance that frustrates callers, and Traversal Testing tells you little to nothing about whether a technically functioning system is actually serving the caller well.
For example, IQ Services does automated testing of self-service systems, and they have many very happy clients. Their special area of expertise is system monitoring for technical performance. Are all the trunk phone lines working? Is the link between the system and the billing computer for access to customer records efficiently communicating the data?
IQS has just announced a new traversal test service they call Feature/Function Testing. Good for them. But they crank up the marketing hyperbole a bit too much when they claim that: "Feature/Function Testing will give you confidence that...your customers will have the best possible experience using your system."
We have tested hundreds of systems for usability, and so say with confidence that a system can be doing the wrong things just fine. In order to truly provide the best customer experience, you need to performa a variety of tests, including performance testing and traversal testing, and also usability testing with live callers, and ongoing caller surveys.
Anything less is like looking at the world through a paper-towel tube.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Time and again we encounter systems that work fine technically, but that fail to meet caller needs. It is more often bad design, not faulty technical performance that frustrates callers, and Traversal Testing tells you little to nothing about whether a technically functioning system is actually serving the caller well.
For example, IQ Services does automated testing of self-service systems, and they have many very happy clients. Their special area of expertise is system monitoring for technical performance. Are all the trunk phone lines working? Is the link between the system and the billing computer for access to customer records efficiently communicating the data?
IQS has just announced a new traversal test service they call Feature/Function Testing. Good for them. But they crank up the marketing hyperbole a bit too much when they claim that: "Feature/Function Testing will give you confidence that...your customers will have the best possible experience using your system."
We have tested hundreds of systems for usability, and so say with confidence that a system can be doing the wrong things just fine. In order to truly provide the best customer experience, you need to performa a variety of tests, including performance testing and traversal testing, and also usability testing with live callers, and ongoing caller surveys.
Anything less is like looking at the world through a paper-towel tube.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 11:53 AM | | | | |