IVR Deconstructed

If you ask the experts, they say we have an obesity problem in the United States, of which diabetes is a part. Fortunately, IVR systems can help.

According to the American Diabetes Association, almost 25.8 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes—8.3% of the population. Another 79 million Americans have pre-diabetes, meaning they have glucose levels that are higher than normal but not quite to the levels of Type 2 diabetes. Many of those with pre-diabetes will develop Type 2 diabetes, especially without changes to diet and exercise levels.

A study from researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Kaiser Permanente Colorado Institute for Health Research and the University of Illinois Chicago set out to discover what role interactive voice response systems could play in helping prevent Type 2 diabetes in the pre-diabetes population.

Weight loss through healthy diet and exercise is a cornerstone for ensuring Americans don’t slide into diabetes if they can prevent it. Unfortunately, processed foods, fast food and a sedentary lifestyle have created a culture of obesity in America.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over one-third (33.9%) of Americans over age 20 are obese. Another 34.4% of adults over 20 are overweight. That’s over two-thirds of our nation’s adults who are either overweight or obese. The statistics for children in America are better than for adults, but they’re still not good. Almost one-fifth of children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 are obese. Even young children are at risk. Over 10% of kids aged 2 to 5 are obese.

By comparison, the obesity rate in nearly all Asian nations is below 10% for entire populations, let alone children from age 2 to 5, according to the World Health Organization. That alone speaks volumes.

Stay tuned for more statistics in part two of this four-part post: Obesity: U.S. vs. World…

IVR systems have proven very effective at helping call centers reduce the number of calls that live agents need to handle. In effect, IVRs act as a first-contact call agent.

A study by the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy shows that an IVR solution can apply to poison centers, as well. In much the same way as it does for call centers, an IVR can help process calls so the poison center can get by with fewer specialists on hand to field calls.

It’s a fairly common cost/benefit problem, and poison centers aren’t immune from having to decide what makes sense for them fiscally as well as what makes sense for providing services.

It’s kind of the same scenario for poison centers as it is for call centers. No matter what, they need to staff a certain number of live agents. But the implications are very different. In this case, those agents are specialists with expertise upon which people are relying for their health or even lives.

The University of New Mexico study—Interactive Voice Response Systems for Medication Identification Requests: Poison or Cure?—set out to discover the advantages and disadvantages to implementing IVR solutions at poison centers.

At the heart of the study was medical identification requests (MIRs) and whether applying IVRs to that task provides a benefit to poison centers.

According to the study, MIRs are somewhat controversial—some centers refuse the practice, often citing “manpower or ethical concerns as the primary reasons for not processing the inquiries.”

As far as ethical concerns and MIRs go, centers may refuse to identify medications so they’re not breaching a patient’s confidentiality or enabling a substance abuser. (You know, a guy calls asking what a pill is, hoping it’s the narcotic he wants to use to get high.)

But for those centers that do provide MIRs (presumably to help parents identify a pill their daughter just took and the like), the specialists on hand to take the calls may be overburdened with calls to provide immediate, necessary care.

Stay tuned for the study results in Poison or Cure?…

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems act kind of like an Internet browser for voice—they connect callers to information in organizations’ databases.

However, IVR systems only operate through audio. They don’t provide a visual for interactions with callers, yet. That’s not a knock on IVR systems—they don’t provide touch, taste or smell either, and no one expects them to.

If researchers at the IBM Almaden Research Center had their way, though, IVR systems would. Well, they’d provide visual as well as audio, anyway.

Researchers Min Yin and Shumin Zhai conducted a series of experiments “examining the benefits of augmenting telephone voice menus with coordinated visual displays and keyword search.”

Yin and Zhai began their research to address what they call “touchtone hell,” which they describe as “the difficulty and frustration with automatic interactive voice response (IVR)-based phone call routing.”

We hear ya. Poorly designed IVR systems are the bane of everyone’s existence at least once in their lives. By poorly designed, I mean IVR systems whose call flow hinders rather than helps callers. (Which is why it’s so important for organizations to design their call flows thoughtfully, with the caller in mind.)

In their report (The Benefits of Augmenting Telephone Voice Menu Navigation with Visual Browsing and Search), Yin and Zhai suggest incorporating visuals on the screens of cell phones to help callers.

The researchers found that by visually displaying a “menu tree” on a caller’s phone, an IVR system could not only make the selection process easier (seeing is usually easier than hearing) but faster (selections display instantly all at once so users don’t have to wait for the system to read them off).

In their report, Yin and Zhai concluded that users would be “much more satisfied with and even enthusiastic” about such a system. They would also save time and encounter fewer errors (the more complex the navigation, the more helpful in reducing errors).

At Plum, we didn’t need anyone to tell us that IVR can help in emergency situations, but it’s nice when studies back it up. Which is what a real-world Texas state study showed in 2009.

Researchers from the Texas Department of State Health Services and Commission on State Emergency Communications provided evidence that IVR systems can help poison control centers disseminate important information during public health emergencies.

On April 28, 2009, a message went live on the Texas Poison Center Network IVR system regarding the H1N1 virus (swine flu). Researchers analyzed data gathered over the next month.

What they found was that IVR is just as helpful in public health emergencies as it is in call centers (sorry to get sales-y). In particular, it was helpful providing information to concerned callers, not all of whom needed to speak to poison center agents.

The simple system offered a choice of English or Spanish language, followed by an informative message regarding H1N1—

The following brief message will tell you what the influenza A (H1N1) or swine flu is, how it is spread, what the symptoms are, how to protect yourself, and what to do if you are sick…

The message went on in detail and ended with the option to speak to a poison center agent if callers didn’t have their questions answered by the message.

According to the study, about a third of the 1,142 callers between the end of April and end of May hung up after the message. With the IVR system, the state was able to handle a full third of callers without escalating to conversations with busy agents.

The researchers concluded that, indeed…Interactive voice response technology can be used to assist poison centers to provide information and handle calls from the public during a public health emergency.

It’s the holidays, and in the spirit of giving I’d like to share a little story with you—a holiday cautionary tale, if you will.

Not about men in red suits breaking into our homes in the middle of the night, about the spirit of giving and helpfulness. (Don’t worry, this isn’t a Hallmark card.)

With all the present buying and money spending this time of year, I’ve been checking my account balances more frequently to make sure I stay on top of my finances (as we all are).

Since I’m no longer secure with mobile banking on my smartphone (I used it a lot for a while, then read some things that made me leery), I’ve actually called my banks to check on my balances while I was out and about shopping.

One of these fine institutions is a national bank (I won’t mention which) with branches everywhere and a sizable chunk of the marketplace in its pocket.

I called one day to see if a bill I’d paid had gone through already. It wasn’t showing up yet online although I’d paid it almost a week before. I thought I’d double-check with the bank via phone while out.

I dialed the number and my bank’s IVR picked up first ring, as expected. I entered in the last four digits of my social security number and gave my mother’s maiden name when prompted for security.

Then the IVR gave me a menu. I listened to about six options and chose one. I proceeded to another menu and chose another option. I went to a third menu, and that’s where things got annoying.

The third menu only had three options, none of which were what I was looking for. I backtracked to the previous menu, listened to the options, then backtracked to the original menu.

By now I realized I needed to talk to a call rep. But when I listened to the original menu again, it never gave me an option for speaking to a representative. It just didn’t say.

You know what this told me? My bank didn’t want to talk to me (sad). Intuitively, I pressed “0” and got through to someone, but the experience left me flat.

The main purpose of an IVR system from the customer standpoint is to provide help, not screen or block calls. (Yes, I got screened by my bank.) Evidently, they aren’t in a very giving mood this holiday season. Bah humbug, bank.