Voice User Interface Design VUI

It seems the current issue of BusinessWeek is focusing on Customer Service Champs in 2008 and “Consumer Vigilantes“.

Therefore it isn’t surprising to seem them cover a little bit of the history of the GetHuman movement and its evolution from a simple IVR cheatsheet into a full movement with the goal of “convincing enterprises that providing high quality customer service and having satisfied customers costs much less than providing low quality customer service and having unsatisfied customers.”

Even though the tone of the article seems to be a little gloomy and critical about how “page views on the site have dwindled”, I would argue that page views and sign-ups for an audio icon are not necessarily a reflection of the level of interest or impact GetHuman and the standards they’ve proposed have had so far.

I think that even though the approach to promote the standards might not have been the best one, it definitively has had an impact on how designers think about customer interactions, how companies are much more aware of the impact of caller experience in automated systems, and has paved the way to get the worlds of consumers, businesses and designers talk the same language and agree on long-term goals.

The part where I think the standards got a little disconnected from the real world had to do with the fact that in other technologies, standards can work in a vacuum as long as implementers or partners agree on them. In our case, I think that the fact that they are so closely related to customer experience and caller satisfaction warrants a much closer analysis of those standards in the context of those same caller’s goals. For example, standard #6 reads: “Callers should not be forced to listen to long/verbose prompts.”, but without any context, it would be akin to promoting a web standard similar to “Users should not be forced to read long/verbose sections of text.”… well, what happens if I’m reviewing a prospectus or accessing a white paper? Would offering that service disqualify me from being standard-compliant?

Furthermore, I think the other reason it cannot survive as an independent standard is because users very seldom limit their interactions to a single interaction channel (telephone in this case) but attempt to use whatever channel is more convenient based on their situation, location and past history with the company (internet, phone, branch, email, fax, chat, etc.). Therefore standards should consider those other channels as well so that the original goal of providing high quality service and having satisfied users can truly be accomplished in the context of the entire customer service experience.

I know for some people Google’s announcement about Android wasn’t as exciting as the expectation of hearing them announce an actual “Gphone” (as it was often called there was still a rumor Google was working on an actual device), yet it seem implementations and applications based on this open and free mobile platform are finally coming out (albeit only as prototypes) and demonstrating how such an approach can in fact result in easier ways for consumers to obtain access to a wide variety of applications.

The prototype included a Google browser, phone dialer, audio player, Google maps, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, calculator and notes. Sweet!

Since it seems the idea itself and its implementation are definitively feasible, it seems now the only remaining questions have to do with all the other non-technical reasons that will have a definitive impact on other players in the wireless and mobile arena. As Gigaom cleverly pointed out, some of those include:

1. All users of carriers that aren’t part of the Open Handset Alliance
2. Device-makers which now have to worry about yet another OS
3. Application developers, which will now have to deal with a significant number of handset/carrier/OS combinations
4. Support departments at participating carriers dealing with non-supported application issues
5. Users having to adapt to yet another set of user interfaces and frameworks

And to this I would like to add a 6th one: “UI Designers having to deal with new interaction paradigms, higher customer expectations, while maintaining design simplicity.”

This is definitively a great opportunity for us UI designers to start thinking about new challenges we’ll be facing when these applications/frameworks become available to the masses, in particular when user habits and natural ways of interacting with them call for the use of speech recognition as either the primary way of interaction, or as a back-up/supportive mode for certain types of goals and contexts.

After catching-up on all the topics and discussions from the vuids group that came out around the Holiday season, the idea that seemed to kept coming up was that it’s still very hard (if not harder) for designers to get designs done right, mostly due to external reasons (things sold the wrong way, business requirements, picky customers, etc.) and particularly when businesses don’t want to pay attention to what designers have to say.

Furthermore, the idea of picking the *right* technology for the job (touchtone, speech, SLMs, or plain-old agents) is the right idea yet not widely supported (by sales people in particular).

Therefore I wanted to share with you this jewel from TED by David Pogue which I just recently ran across which reinforces the point that “simplicity sells”. Funny to think it’s a couple of years old, but keeps being as true now as it was back then. In particular, I loved the part about Palm having a “tap counter” to make sure no task required more than a limited number of taps on a Palm device, which makes me wonder if our projects wouldn’t benefit from having a “word counter”, a “choices counter” and a “menu levels counter”

Enjoy!

Forget about Persona! We all know personalization is the new black, and everyone strives to make devices, systems and interactions as individualized as possible so as to gain better and faster acceptance.

I’m glad to see these ideas are starting to expand to new areas. In this particular case, I recently learned about a company called YourPND which basically allows you to record your own navigation voice recordings using your own computer and a microphone. Getting the full prompt set done takes about 7 minutes, and after that, the system creates a file ready to be used by your navigation device along with the installation instructions.

And not only that, but they take this concept of recording your own instructions a step further and encourage users to get creative by either adding your own catchphrases, or by using them as a gift to others (imagine grandpa following little Jimmy’s directions to get to their house) in the form of a USB flash drive containing all the instructions.

It’s currently only available in Dutch with an English version coming out soon. Furthermore, it only works on TomTom’s navigation devices even though other systems are scheduled to be supported as well. But at any rate, this is a pretty good idea which definitively adds a personal touch to automation and gives us a clue about some of the things we can try to make automation a little more interesting, fun and “familiar”.

So, anyone looking forward to hear “I’m sorry, I still didn’t hear myself”?

That’s right. How many times have you been outside and saw one of those humongous ad displays telling you about the next great thing since sliced bread? Well, what if you could now interact with those displays, and not only that, but even be able to play with other bystanders!

I’ve seen similar things in shopping centers where an overhead projector displays ads on the floor with which kids can interact. For example, a sports brand may display a soccer ball within the projected image and kids start to kick the ball around the ad in an attempt to score a goal.

But this is the first time I’ve heard about someone taking that to the next level by targeting to adults and allowing them to interact with it using any cell phone!

Megaphone has created this innovative way to engage crowds and let them interact with advertisements. As I mentioned, all you need is a cell phone which then becomes a game controllers you can then use to shoot other players or fire weapons at space-alien attackers while seeing their own phone avatar along with those of other players. Some games are played with your telephone keypad while some others are controlled with your voice. Sweet!

As you can see in the videos below, the games have a certain ‘retro’ vibe which makes them very appealing and reflect the simplicity of the game, making it easy for anyone to join in.

As some of you might have seen in TV ads, Ford Motor Co. recently announced a partnership with Microsoft along with the availability of a new technology called SYNC that allows you to control your stereo and phone while driving simply using your voice.

What made this even more interesting to me was the fact that they are trying to reach the market by combining the ‘cool’ factor speech technology provides as well as by using some clever advertising partnerships to target specific demographics such as the engagement with Juanes to target Hispanics of Generation Y.

But advertising aside, one obvious challenge for UI designers has to be the design of these control and command interfaces since on one side we hear about the safety advantages of the use of voice vs. typing (see video below), but on the other we hear about all the research that has been done regarding cell phone use on the road which suggests “you’re better off drinking and driving than phoning and driving.” and showed that users are four times more likely to be involved in a crash.

With the advent of new mobile and multimodal solutions, it becomes apparent that good design and low cognitive load will play a critical role moving forward. So far no one has died from being misrecognized when asking for an account balance, but things might change if we eventually move towards something like hands-free driving (Caller: Stop. Car: Sorry, I didn’t get that.Caller: Stop!! Car: Sorry, I still didn’t get that. Crash!).

Monthly phone service: $49.99. New phone: $19.99. Privacy: Priceless.

Is it really priceless? If you had to put a price to it, what would it be?

A new start-up called Pudding Media thinks it has an answer for that, and it is a lot lower than you would think: free calls.

In a very similar way to how Google found a way to monetize search via intelligent and targeted ads based on either regular web searches or by the content’s of their GMail email inboxes, Pudding Media is attempting to do something similar by using the telephone.

Nowadays, we’re all used to those messages about how “your call may be recorded for quality purposes”, which we now at the end of the day doesn’t provide any real benefit to the actual caller. But in this case, it is not only about quality anymore but about finding new ways to reach consumers while we have their attention.

Flagged as “enriched phone conversations with relevant and interesting content”, the way their offering works is that you’re offered a web-based phone service where you can dial a number and engage in a conversation for free. The trade-off of course is that by doing that, you agreed to allow Pudding Media to eavesdrop on your conversation so that relevant ads can be displayed on your screen during your conversation. Speech recognition software monitors the calls, and then their system decides which ads to present based on the content of that call.

Since the whole system is automated via the use of speech recognition, their response to the question about privacy is that no calls are recorded and no humans are involved in any part of the process, so your calls are safe. Nevertheless, to me it is a step closer to my original question of how much is your privacy worth, specially because from an advertiser’s perspective, they are offered flexibility in targeting, placement and format of advertising based on demographic information, location and even context of the conversation. Furthermore, ads can be placed before, during or after a call or a message is retrieved, and can be displayed on your computer screen, delivered as a message or as actual audio prompts that are streamed before the call connects.

Considering some of the bad press self-service automation has received, I would love to see this concept applied in more proactive, less advertising-driven ways. For example, imagine a multi-modal experience obtained by expanding the live chat capabilities most service websites offer now to allow for someone to pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other end. Then, while the conversation takes place, the website could be updated with relevant information about a particular issue, a list of FAQs while the calls is on hold, and why not even offer discount coupons based on how long callers have to wait in line, or even gift certificates if the system identifies the caller has been calling multiple times regarding the same issue.

Now, that to me would be priceless.

Do you love me?

I was just reading an article on Fortune asking the question of whether your customers love you or not.

Similar to the recent post I had regarding companies that are using customer service as a differentiator, this time around they analyze some Entrepreneurs which are not only using it that way but that are building entire businesses around the concept of good service.

The funny thing is that none of the things being done by these companies is radically different from what some companies would even consider ‘common sense’, yet the advent of the new Web 2.0 world has chance the customer-company relationship in radical ways…

We’ve all seen (or heard) those recordings of dissatisfied customers interacting with companies that are then posted to various websites and blogs. In the article, one customer took even an extra step and decided to visit a company’s headquarters armed with a video camera à la 60-minutes, interviewing employees about the delay in her product.

Therefore, now that customers are taking a much more active role in expressing their feelings and frustrations with poor customer service (including the 15% of ticked-off customers entertaining fantasies of revenge), what should be the role of the phone? Should it simply shield and route customer’s complains in an efficient matter, or should it be taken to the next step and play a critical role in providing a service and satisfying a caller need? In particular, what role should phone automation and self-service play in a small business concept where competing with larger rivals solely on price and selection is a losing game yet most haven’t started to explore its use and benefits outside of voice mail or maybe an auto attendant?

I find it very encouraging that the article doesn’t simply dismiss automation as an anti-human attitude nor assumes that self-service is a synonym of poor customer experience. Instead, they suggest involving customers early on in the design of the product or service (which they refer to as user-innovation).

Furthermore, they even offer a quiz to assess your level of customer service where 30% of the questions have a direct relationship with services offered over the phone:

1) Does your website include a customer-service phone number? - (which can also be applied to whether you make it easy for a caller to get a hold of an operator) Here they point out that not including one gives the impression that you’re deliberately trying to make it difficult for them to reach you with problems, and that by adding it your customer-retention rate is likely to improve.

2) Is the technology you’re using to help with customer service (phone systems, software) modified to your specific needs? - (which can also be applied to whether you’re localizing them to other languages instead of simply translating them) Here they point out that you gain an advantage over one-size-fits all rivals and which I would consider to be the first step towards personalization and data-driven design.

3) Have you outsourced any customer service functions? - (which I would argue includes ‘outsourcing’ your most common functions to a self-service system, as well as ‘outsourcing’ your system user interface design to professionals Here they point out that for growing firms, hiring experts frees your team to do other important tasks such as selling or improving your product.

I leave you with a final quote:

“Sounds so simple. It almost makes you forget that becoming a company known for great service takes planning, persistence, and at the end of the day, the hard-earned goodwill of your customer.”

I recently read the story about how Netflix is using its call center agents as a strategic weapon and differentiator against their competition - particularly Blockbuster.

Could this finally indicate a tipping point in the way corporations view their “Cost Centers” “Call Center”? Not only are they eliminating the use of email to manage customer service inquiries but they are also implementing things no one would even consider in a customer service environment - live 24 hour service, prominently displaying their toll-free number on their Web site, removing requirements on call durations and empowering agent to make decisions that could make customers happy.

In my opinion, the next move in their strategy should be the use of automation but not as a replacement of that live interaction (which is what the email strategy was all about) but rather as a filter to handle the simple calls they seem to receive (for example, rearranging titles in the queue) so that more complicated and valuable calls (such as those dealing with possible cancellations) can be handled personally by agents.

Furthermore, their decision to set up the call center in the United States instead of outsourcing it to other countries seems to follow a recent trend in which callers are so disappointed by the service provided by non-native English speakers, that they’ve reported they would prefer automation than outsourced live agents.

Finally, one more interesting point in the article is how they decided to set up the call center in Portland instead of other cities where the costs would’ve been lower… simply because of the standard “politeness and empathy” that Oregonians show on their daily interaction with each other. Anyone know about any commercial “personas” from that area?