The Customer Service Survey
"Cecil, Connect Me To Kellogg-257 Please."*
Wed - September 20, 2006 04:02 PM in
I read an interesting article this morning on SpeechTek's online magazine titled "Is Paul English Right?" by Wes Hayden, CEO of Genesys Telecommunications Labs.
Peter called it a classic example of a self-serving editorial, but as the VocaLabs sales guy, I've no problem with promoting one's own opinion, especially because Mr. Hayden answers the question as Yes, Paul is right. I agree.
My problem is that the author skirts around WHY Paul is right, and he makes some questionable comments in the process.
People have no problem with self service customer care so long as it meets their needs. It is bad IVR that is the cause of the problem. No vendor including Genesys is blame free. This is a subject I've written and spoken about many times: "If you build a system to save money over serving the caller, it will do neither. But if you build it with a caller focus, it will do both."
In attempting to explain the "symbiotic" relationship that should exist between the IVR and the human CSR, he uses the recent Citibank "dial 0"-get a human advertising campaign as both evidence of consumer backlash against self service customer care and as evidence of this symbiotic relationship. Perhaps this wasn't such a good example. Recall that VocaLabs has a constantly running survey on service quality among the nationwide banks, and Citibank has consistently had the lowest overall satisfaction scores.
During the period that the dial "0"- get a human ad campaign was running, all the banks except Citi improved their satisfaction scores, Citi's dropped such that caller satisfaction with Citi was actually worse after a service call than immediately before. I have not investigated deeply enough to make an absolute statement, but my sense is that the ad campaign raised caller expectations, and when they actually called and found service wasn't any better, Citi customers were more disappointed than had the campaign never run. (In fact, I suspect that more callers tried to reach a live operator after seeing the ad and Citi failed to add enough people to the phones to allow for it.)
The author then moves on to tout how speech technology allows the humanization of the computer voice, inducing the caller to stay with the machine. And he accepts this as a positive. Not necessarily. There is a quite strong argument that giving the machine human attributes can be a bad idea; that it insults the caller since they know they are dealing with a machine incapable of real empathy, and that humanization actually distracts from the caller completing their business with a minimum of fuss.
He then closes by comparing our resistance to talking to a machine to a half century ago when there was some resistance to dial telephones replacing speaking the phone number to the local operator to be connected. We think this is a poor analogy, as Peter said to me this AM: "If only speech recognition DID work as well as dial phones, then there would be no need for a Paul English."
[*In the 50's our small town operator was a lady named Cecil Stuart. The town was so small Cecil could recognize voices and where the call was coming from. Didn't really need numbers. All I had to do was pick up the phone and ask for Grandma, and she'd know what connection to make. We knew enough not to call after Cecil went to bed unless it was a real emergency because she'd tell our parents.]
Posted by Rick Rappe
My problem is that the author skirts around WHY Paul is right, and he makes some questionable comments in the process.
People have no problem with self service customer care so long as it meets their needs. It is bad IVR that is the cause of the problem. No vendor including Genesys is blame free. This is a subject I've written and spoken about many times: "If you build a system to save money over serving the caller, it will do neither. But if you build it with a caller focus, it will do both."
In attempting to explain the "symbiotic" relationship that should exist between the IVR and the human CSR, he uses the recent Citibank "dial 0"-get a human advertising campaign as both evidence of consumer backlash against self service customer care and as evidence of this symbiotic relationship. Perhaps this wasn't such a good example. Recall that VocaLabs has a constantly running survey on service quality among the nationwide banks, and Citibank has consistently had the lowest overall satisfaction scores.
During the period that the dial "0"- get a human ad campaign was running, all the banks except Citi improved their satisfaction scores, Citi's dropped such that caller satisfaction with Citi was actually worse after a service call than immediately before. I have not investigated deeply enough to make an absolute statement, but my sense is that the ad campaign raised caller expectations, and when they actually called and found service wasn't any better, Citi customers were more disappointed than had the campaign never run. (In fact, I suspect that more callers tried to reach a live operator after seeing the ad and Citi failed to add enough people to the phones to allow for it.)
The author then moves on to tout how speech technology allows the humanization of the computer voice, inducing the caller to stay with the machine. And he accepts this as a positive. Not necessarily. There is a quite strong argument that giving the machine human attributes can be a bad idea; that it insults the caller since they know they are dealing with a machine incapable of real empathy, and that humanization actually distracts from the caller completing their business with a minimum of fuss.
He then closes by comparing our resistance to talking to a machine to a half century ago when there was some resistance to dial telephones replacing speaking the phone number to the local operator to be connected. We think this is a poor analogy, as Peter said to me this AM: "If only speech recognition DID work as well as dial phones, then there would be no need for a Paul English."
[*In the 50's our small town operator was a lady named Cecil Stuart. The town was so small Cecil could recognize voices and where the call was coming from. Didn't really need numbers. All I had to do was pick up the phone and ask for Grandma, and she'd know what connection to make. We knew enough not to call after Cecil went to bed unless it was a real emergency because she'd tell our parents.]
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 04:02 PM | | | | |