Voice User Interface Design VUI

In most conferences, events and training classes, one common argument is that Self-Service Systems and IVR would be much better if we as an industry were able to craft a set of best practices everyone would follow.

In fact, the “GetHuman” movement and its standard is an attempt to dictate how customer service phone systems and support should work.

I think we all agree on this, but I always like to hear other opinions about similar topics, I found an intriguing response in Shaun Smith’s entry on Best Practices and Customer Experience.

He points out that even though we always look at those companies that have great service and provide great experiences (Disney, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton) in an attempt to learn how they do it so we can do it too, that ‘me too’ strategy is pretty dangerous.

And I’ll argue that the same danger can be present in our industry and in VUI Design in general.

Think about it. When a new customer engages us into creating a new self-service solution, one of the main business drivers is to differentiate from the competition. “Strategy is about making a choice; of what to do, but event more importantly, what not to do. To attempt to copy other organizations runs the risk of your being second rate, at best and totally inappropriate at worst.”

If you look at the last great VUI design you came across, the one that left a memorable experience that maybe even made you recommend it to someone else, chances are it belonged to an organization that has a strong brand, offers distinctive experiences, attract enthusiastic users, and… has their own unique way of doing things.

These companies found that their approach to business is not the norm, they do unusual things that defy conventional wisdom.

I think the secret is that they didn’t focus on complying with certain standards or best practices, but they rather focused on differentiation and meeting the needs of their users (customers). Some CEO’s even said their success started the day they stopped following the market leader and started following their customers.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to think about good VUI design in terms on how well it creates value for our users, on how it ensures that callers are successful, and not on how many multi-slot entries we have, on how clever our menu choices seem to be, or on how easy it is to talk to someone (when in fact, sometimes that’s not what our callers want)?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 11:13 am and is filed under Customer Experience, Dialog Design, Information Architecture, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.