IVR Deconstructed

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are useful tools for healthcare providers. They help doctors’ offices remind patients about appointments, yearly checkups and the like.

IVR is also proving to be a useful tool for patients as well, both in treatment and outside of treatment. At Plum, we’ve already seen it applied to smoking cessation efforts, for example.

A study by researchers from the University of Vermont, Duke University Medical School and University of Vermont College of Medicine has shown that IVR systems can work for patients with chronic pain after they complete their therapy.

Research shows that group cognitive-behavioral therapy can help patients with chronic, untreatable pain to cope with their pain and the stress associated with it to improve their daily functioning.

But what happens when patients leave their treatment? It can be hard for them to keep up with the skills learned in group therapy when going from “initially learning skills, while working with a therapist and with considerable group support, to mastering and maintaining those skills on one’s own…”

In their study—Therapeutic Interactive Voice Response for Chronic Pain Reduction and Relapse Prevention—the researchers from Duke and Vermont added IVR to treatment of 26 subjects.

The treatment included a four-part IVR element with “a daily self-monitoring questionnaire, a [teaching] review of coping skills, pre-recorded behavioral rehearsals of coping skills, and monthly personalized feedback messages from the [cognitive behavioral] therapist based on a review of the patient’s daily reports.”

The researchers found that therapeutic IVR treatment greatly helped all 26 subjects after they left their therapy, both in strengthening their coping skills in the short term (4-month follow-up) and maintaining those skills in the longer term (8-month follow-up).

“We believe that if our findings are replicable,” the researchers wrote. “Then using the [therapeutic IVR] as a coping skill consolidation and relapse prevention program could be an efficacious and cost-effective addition to any health care program.”

The analog way for families to keep track of soccer practice, ballet and flute lessons is a calendar tacked up on a wall in the kitchen. But, as we all know, we don’t live in an analog world anymore.

If families were like companies, they could keep track of things with iCalendar or Outlook, but that would require laptops or smartphones for everyone in the family, along with some tech savvy.

A study by Iowa State University researcher Mark Monroe proposes something much simpler—using a voice interface system to do the job.

“[Feature] cell phones have enabled communications between family members but don’t provide access to systems such as email and the family calendar,” Monroe writes in his report, Remote Voice Interface for Home Communication Tasks.

Let’s face it, what dad or mom wants to buy $600-$800 smartphones for every member of the family? A much less expensive and simpler approach could be to set up a voice interface system.

“The proposed system is a home information system focused on improving family communication and control of household tasks. A core set of communication functions includes voicemail, email and calendar.”

With the advances in recent years in voice-interface technology (particularly the advent of VoiceXML IVR and improvements in speech recognition software), such a system is possible.

“In order to make these functions as available as possible, they must be accessible in various forms, via various means.”

What Monroe proposes is a centralized system that resides in the family home but is accessible from a variety of devices. Family members could access the calendar or emails on the family home computer, via a PDA, by calling into the system for audio messages or even with a “portable screen in the kitchen.”

It’s an interesting concept—kind of like the systems used in the corporate world, just scaled down for the family.

It’s too bad all travel days can’t be like the ones I had over the holidays this year. I liken those days to using a good IVR—no lines, no hassles, just in and out and on your way.

I’ve never actually flown on a holiday before, and I’d have to say it wasn’t anything like I expected. I had flights on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, and I figured I’d be in the longest security lines of my life, but it wasn’t the case.

Christmas Eve was pretty festive and relaxed, actually. All of the lines for security had come earlier in the week, and I just scooted on through. And all the people traveling along with me or working were happy about the holidays.

There was a sense of comradery, of being in it together. Even the TSA people were wishing everyone a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. It was nice and didn’t feel like traveling so much.

On New Year’s Eve the airports were like ghost towns. I mean, there was literally no one in the airport for my first flight out. No one waiting to check in. No one waiting in the security line. It was awesome.

All in all, my travels over the holidays were breezy. It was like using a good IVR system. There were no long lines, no delays, no holdups—I got my business done quickly and easily.

From the customer perspective, an IVR system is supposed to help make things easier. Customers aren’t interested in the cost-saving benefits of IVR (the companies running the IVRs concern themselves with that, of course).

We just want do what we need to do with no hassles. Good IVRs pick up on the first ring, provide easy and clear navigation and get the information we need right away. Good IVRs are a breath of fresh air. Just like traveling on a holiday, evidently.

I did a post recently about a research project looking for a way to use smartphones as medical devices. It’s actually a natural fit for interactive voice response (IVR) systems.

At Northeastern University, researchers are exploring how to use smartphones and nanotechnology to measure glucose and sodium in human blood. If successful, the technology could also measure a number of other things, according to SlashGear (modified smartphone).

The way it would work is, in the case of diabetics, patients inject (or have injected into them, more likely) nanoparticles just under the skin. The nanoparticles react to glucose—becoming fluorescent.

Instead of blood pricks, patients use their smartphones to read the fluorescence (kind of how people use smartphones to scan airline boarding passes or retail items—there’s actually an app where you can scan something in a store and find out if it’s cheaper somewhere else).

If researchers are able to make this technology happen, patients could integrate it with an IVR system. The phone could read blood sugar levels and notify patients if they need to eat or inject insulin or even see their doctor or go to the emergency room.

An IVR could provide detailed analyses of their blood sugar levels and educational information on treatment for any given level.

The IVR could also integrate with medical systems to notify emergency medical teams of a potentially serious condition. If a patient tested their blood, and their blood sugar levels were dangerously low, the IVR would automatically notify emergency medical personnel—imperative if a person loses consciousness.

As smartphones continue to evolve into far more than phones, they could become necessary life tools. And IVRs could be a big part of that.

IVR applications can solve many problems for contact centers and enterprises alike.  By automating a company’s most repetitive calls, users (whether they are customers or employees) can access information in a quick and easy fashion without being held in a call queue.  Also, the average call length of an automated call is much shorter than an agent call.  However, all of the benefits of IVR are lost if menu options, survey questions or requests for information are too complex.  As we discussed in a past post about VUI (voice user interface) design,  the call flow or caller user interface must be designed in a user-friendly fashion in order to realize the benefits of IVR technology.

Keeping the call flow simple is the best way to minimize caller frustration, improve containment rates and decrease abandoned calls.  Keep the menu options short.  If there are a number of options offered to the caller, the first set of options should be limited to five selections.  Additionally, the most frequent or routine caller requests should be presented as the first menu options.

Wording choice is also an important part of designing a caller friendly IVR application.  Wording of instructional prompts and requests for input should be simple.  Stay away from using complex or specialized language.  Consistency is also important.  IVR applications should prompt callers to enter data or navigate menu options using similar phrasing as not to confuse callers.  Using consistent phrasing also lets the caller know what to expect and how to interact with the IVR, which makes for a more user-friendly caller experience.

If shortening the call length of a typical agent call is an objective, only use automatic speech recognition to collect data that can’t be entered by a caller through a touchtone key pad.  Examples of the type of data that is difficult to collect through touch tone would be a caller’s name, address, email address or product names.  Using speech recognition to allow callers to navigate through simple menu options can add an element of sophistication to a call flow. However, it is not necessary and can sometimes lead to caller frustration.  If the speech recognition engine does not understand the user’s utterance due to a loud calling environment, or other limiting factors, callers are likely to opt out of the IVR to speak with an agent.  Speech recognition is not a perfect technology and does not always understand a caller’s spoken commands on the first try.

There is a number of best practices that one can apply to the design of a VUI.  Many are dependent on the actual call flow and the purpose of implementing an IVR solution.