Archive for category digium
The IVR Clinic with Allison Smith
Allison Smith, The Asterisk Voice
The 15 Commandments of IVR
Commandment #3: Keep Things Simple
So far in this Blog Series, we’ve covered the first two “commandments” of writing clean, easy-to-use IVR systems:
- Commandment #1: Don’t Overestimate Your Listener’s Attention Span
- Commandment #2: Thou Shalt Not Create Fake Mailboxes.
Both really key points: many writers of IVR systems feel like they have their callers “captive”, and that now that they have them listening them to their menu of options, now is a great opportunity to sell to them; to educate them in detail, and to reassure them that they’ve made the right decision by calling their company (which can be artificially made to sound bigger and more impressive than it actually may be by creating fake options and forcing callers to listen to the entire selection of options which, essentially, go nowhere.)
The customers who call into your business are busy people. They are probably over-stressed multi-taskers who simply want to accomplish what they need to accomplish in this call and move along. Your job – as the constructor of the telephone systems which “sorts” callers into appropriate departments – is to make their experience in your IVR as simplified and efficient as possible – hence Commandment #3: Keep Things Simple.
If it feels like I’m belaboring the point of simplicity, brevity, and clarity to death, I likely am. As someone who on a daily basis voices systems for a myriad of companies, I can tell you that I always have in mind – while I’m voicing the prompts – how it will feel when someone will call into this system. Will they let out a sigh, dejected, as they realize that in order to get to the department they need to speak with, they will *first* have to endure a commercial, emphasizing the benefits and wonderments of the company they’ve dialed? Will they become overwhelmed and confused by too many options – or options which are so similar as to confuse the decision of which to press? Will their selection be filtered down into too many confusing subsets?
It goes both ways: you will want to ensure that the information you’re asking for from callers is information which will not overload your organization, or make it a challenge to follow through. Just last week, I read a mailbox greeting which instructed the callers: “…For a faster response, please leave your name, number, and brief message explaining why you’re interested in partnering with us, along with your commitment level, your main passion, and the reason why you have decided to enter our industry.” You could really be inviting trouble there; most people wouldn’t likely take advantage of the situation and leave a half-hour long manifesto. But a surprisingly large number will. You need to invite that same clarity, brevity, and economy in a request for incoming information if you have any hope of boiling down the information gathered into a useful form and following through.
Reduce down the choices into the simplest options. Get callers to their needed department as quickly as possible. Don’t ask for information to be input – such as pin or account numbers – if the live agent is just going to ask for the information again. And above all: respect the caller’s time and energy.
Next blog: we’re going to be drilling deeper into the mechanics of sorting your callers into various departments, by giving them the option of not participating in the format you’ve designed at all. That’s right: we’ll be tackling Commandment #4: Always Give Callers an Opt-In.”
Watch for the next blog entry in about two weeks time! Thanks for reading, and your comments are most appreciated!
Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech Solutions for All
Guest Blogger - Tim Kruse is the VP of Sales and Business Development for Incendonet, a Digium software partner. He has been involved with speech recognition and advanced communication solutions for more than 15 years and will be presenting during an upcoming webinar on July 13th at 12PM CST. Register Now
I have been working with speech recognition technology since 1999 and appreciate how far the technology has come. As with many technologies we come across, the more we all use them the better they seem to work. We all become trained by our daily interactions. If technology is useful, affordable and easy to implement than eventually most of us will adopt it.
For many Small and Medium sized Businesses (SMBs), the idea of implementing advanced speech recognition and text-to-speech solutions hasn’t really occurred. Most aren’t aware that speech recognition based offerings created with SMBs in mind even exist. Even in today’s Internet age with websites, social networking, chat, email, and text messaging, our business phone system is still the focal point of interactions with our customers, and speech recognition has been shown to be the preferred method for interacting with self-service applications. SMBs need to do more with less, better serve their customers, project a professional image to the outside world and allow their employees to be more productive in today’s mobile world. Here are some of the ways my company has helped SMBs. use speech recognition based solutions.
- A small school district was inundated with calls first thing in the morning and when school let out in the afternoon. A significant portion of the calls were simple call transfer requests. The school district implemented our speech-attendant to off load call transfers and freed up help desk employees to better serve parents with more complex inquiries.
- A construction company needed our help so their field workers collaborate by calling one main number and simply stating the person or the department they needed to reach. These workers were able to collaborate as necessary with safe hands-free and eyes-free access to each other as well as stay connected to their corporate e-mail and calendars using simple, spoken commands.
- A winery located in California, where hands-free legislation exists for mobile phone users when driving, wanted to better serve their customers by replacing their dial-by-name directory with our speech-attendant. To improve collaboration for their field workers they also created a custom sub-directory of employee’s mobile phone numbers.
With Digium’s support of standards like SIP, companies of all sizes have the power and flexibility to easily add speech recognition based solutions to their VoIP phone systems. Specialized VoIP appliances such as Switchvox and SpeechBridge enable SMBs to implement advanced communications solutions previously reserved for only large enterprises and call centers.
Tim Kruse, VP of Sales and Business Development for Incendonet, will be the featured speaker at the next Asterisk In-Depth Webinar. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, July 13th at 12PMCST. Register Now.
Digium’s Fond Farewell to Jared Smith
It is with a mixture of pride and sorrow that I share the news that long-time Digium employee and Asterisk community member Jared Smith is leaving Digium to become the Fedora Project Leader, employed by Red Hat. Jared has contributed to the Asterisk community for the better part of a decade, and has worked tirelessly for the last few years at Digium in community relations and training roles. I’m confident that he will remain engaged with Asterisk — he assures me he’ll be at Astricon in October — but it will be a challenge to find such a capable and committed colleague to take his place within the ranks of Digium. We wish Jared all the best in his new role, and we’re confident he’ll do well there. We’ll certainly miss him here.
Digium’s Training Department has been working on some exciting projects, and more work remains to be done. If you know Asterisk, have an interest in training, and want to work for Digium, we’d love to hear from you! Contact us at training@digium.com. And stay tuned to digium.com/training to hear what we’re up to…
New to Asterisk? Learn how to get started today!
Posted by admin in AsteriskNOW, asterisk, digium, switchvox on July 2, 2010
Watch this new video from Digium to learn how you can get started with Asterisk! During the presentation you will learn:
What is Asterisk?
* What can I do with Asterisk?
* Which version should I use?
* How do I get started?
The 15 Commandments of IVR — Commandment #2: “Thou Shalt Not Create Fake Mailboxes”
Allison Smith, The Asterisk Voice
About a year ago, I recorded an IVR for a small independent dry cleaning business – not really a Mom and Pop company; they were located in outlets across three States, and were doing very well – they prided themselves on fitting in seamlessly into the communities they served and they were at just the right size for their comfort level. When I recorded their system, a request for a total re-record came in (never a good thing) but their reason for the redo was unique and sticks with me to this day: my usual professional tone was seen as too “highbrow” for them. Created too much of a “big company” impression. They didn’t want to be “Martinizing”; they wanted to sound “local”….friendly….and accessible.
This is in sharp contrast with how *most* companies I voice for would like to come across – I would estimate that 80% of the companies who hire me to voice their systems are small and would like to sound bigger. Almost all firms have their eye on growth; the best way to do that is to create the impression that they’re already there.
A common technique to “manufacture” the impression that a company is bigger than it really is, is to invent a lengthy menu of mailboxes which technically don’t exist – an impressive, vast menu which goes on for 12, 13, 14 options or more – all in an attempt to articulate to the caller that they are legitimate; the caller has reached a well-staffed company who needs *that many* mailboxes to keep all requests organized and processed appropriately.
Many (or all) of the mailboxes will re-route to a single point of contact, but as pointed out by Matt Florell of Vicidial (who, along with Jim Van Meggelen, acts as my “IVR Senseis” for this series of articles – their input has already been invaluable) – it’s easy for the person in charge of monitoring the various mailboxes to overlook one or two of them for a couple of weeks, and “then they end up with 300 voicemails and only notice it when Asterisk hits its limit,” warns Matt. “Sending voicemails to an email address and auto-deleting from Asterisk does help with this,” continues Matt: “..but the flip side to that is that your company’s SPAM filter starts to think these messages are SPAM and deletes them.”
I submit to all IVR designers the importance of keeping the opening menu as simple as possible to navigate around – and this means to only feature the mailboxes which are actually assigned. It respects the caller’s time; it streamlines the system, and it prevents missed messages and botched follow-through. The idea that a more impressive feeling is created with a menu full of unnecessarily bloated options is counter what you’ve possibly encountered in your own telephone experiences – personally, I’m usually grateful for three or four simple options, narrowing down the likelihood in my mind that I have chosen the correct department for my inquiry.
Next installment in The IVR Clinic’s “15 Commandments of IVR” is #3: Keep Things Simple.
Thanks for reading!
The IVR Clinic — with Allison Smith
Allison Smith, The Asterisk Voice
The 15 Commandments of IVR
Commandment #1: Don’t Overestimate Your Listener’s Attention Span
We’re embarking on a fifteen-part-series of blogs designed to assist in the writing of smooth-flowing, efficiently-working IVR systems — as the voice of Asterisk, I’m hoping that my experiences with recording IVR prompts daily will provide some insight into what I consider to be the pitfalls which leads to awkwardly-running and ineffective IVR systems, and ways to avoid them. Many purchases and re-sellers of Asterisk are frequently thrown into the position of having to draft IVR messages for themselves or their clients — hopefully this blog will facilitate the writing of clean, easy-to-navigate prompts.
The very first commandment we’ll delve into: Don’t Overestimate Your Listener’s Attention Span is perhaps the pivotal and most important one of all — a good place to start. If you accomplish this one — it will be easy sailing going forward.
The number one mistake that most people make — when sitting down and coming up with a script that will greet their company’s callers — is over-informing in the opening “main” prompt. Packing way too much information and detail into what should be a concise, helpful directory which sole function is to welcome their callers and sort their request into the appropriate department. I encounter opening greetings almost every day which sound a little like this: (copied verbatim from an actual script. The names have been changed):
“Thank you for calling ABC Grommets — the award-winning grommets you’ve read about in Time and the Economist! Are you constantly disappointed in your grommet choice? Are you continually replacing grommets purchased from that *other* company? You’ve called the right place. Our grommets are 100% nickel, American made, and come in the widest spectrum of sizes and weights in the business. Your satisfaction is our complete focus. We pride ourselves on not only a superior product, but also the best service possible. We look forward to giving you the same care and attention that we’re famous for. If you know your party’s extension, please enter it now. Otherwise…”
They’re kidding, right? They’re actually wanting to make customers listen to that gigantic welcoming speech — and this is *before* they’ve even been offered a list of extensions to choose from? Save the informational, “sales-y” content for your on-hold program. Don’t forget — it’s likely that customers who are cold-calling already know about your company via your website, and are quite possibly calling as a second-string of contact. By all means, confirm that they have the right ABC Grommets on the line (“Thank you for calling ABC Grommets — the #1 supplier of grommets to the Eastern Seaboard…”) but then, immediately start the process of dividing callers into extensions. Think about someone who calls your company multiple times, and how irritating it would be to have to listen to that entire, lengthy commercial more than once. Defer to people’s time constraints (and patience levels) and keep your opening greeting as concise, grabby, interesting-without-being-wordy, and as humanely short as possible.
Keep it simple. Keep it short. Resist the temptation to use your main greeting as a way of dazzling customers or overloading them with information now that you have them “cornered”. Impart only the basic amount of information to set the tone and to best shuffle your customers to the appropriate department — and never forget that the purpose of a good opening greeting is to organize your callers to the right department, so that they may be best served, and your staff’s time is spent most effectively. Plain and simple. Keep this maxim about brevity — and attention spans — in your mind as you draft *all* the options in your phone tree, and you’ll have a smooth, succinct system that’s a joy to navigate around. OK, maybe not a “joy”. But not something people dread.
It might help to remember *your own* last frustrating time spent on the phone when you were trying to work your way painfully slowly through an IVR. I can almost promise you that a lot of that powerless feeling you encountered came from having to listen to too much, and having to part with even more precious time.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our “IVR Commandments” series, where I expose another time-waster: “#2: Thou Shalt Not Create Fake Mailboxes”.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment. And watch for the next installment in about two weeks time!
AsteriskNOW 1.7 Hits The Streets
Posted by admin in AsteriskNOW, digium on June 9, 2010
Greetings, folks. As of today, AsteriskNOW 1.7.0 is available and can be downloaded from http://www.asterisk.org/asterisknow.
AsteriskNOW is a quick and easy way to get started with Asterisk. It includes a basic Linux operating system, your choice of Asterisk 1.6.2 or 1.4, and optionally your choice of web-based graphical user interface (GUI). AsteriskNOW is the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to build an Asterisk-based communication system without the complexities of manually installing everything by hand.
To use AsteriskNOW, start by downloading the .iso image. To install, simply burn the image to a CD, drop the CD into the computer that you wish to transform into a phone system and boot from the disc. AsteriskNOW will ask you a few basic questions, then install itself. You’ll have a free phone system in less than 30 minutes. (Please note that it will erase the hard drive of the computer when it installs — be sure you’ve backed up anything you want to keep.)
If you’re already familiar with AsteriskNOW you might like to know about some of the improvements since the previous release. In 1.7.0 we’ve:
- Added an installation menu to give you a choice of GUIs and Asterisk versions
- Added Digium interface card detection and configuration capability to FreePBX (was already available in Asterisk-GUI)
- Re-introduced the Asterisk-GUI as an option
- Introduced an option for no GUI at all
- Updated the underlying Linux distribution to CentOS 5.5
- Updated many packages to the latest versions
AsteriskNOW Connectivity
AsteriskNOW can connect to your choice of internet telephony service providers, and can use Digium’s complete family of analog and digital telephony interface cards to connect to phones and phone lines.
AsteriskNOW Support
If you have questions or need pointers on using AsteriskNOW, check out the AsteriskNOW forums. If you’re building a production system and you need support, Digium offers technical assistance via support subscriptions for AsteriskNOW. Last but not least, if you run across an issue (a.k.a. bug) while using AsteriskNOW, please do us a favor and post it to the issue tracker: http://issues.asterisk.org (be sure to select the AsteriskNOW project).
Thanks,
Rod Montgomery
Product Manager, Digium
AstriCon 2010 is coming to town!
AstriCon 2010 is coming to town!
I finally had the opportunity to visit the site of AstriCon 2010 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center and it brought it all home to me.
WE ARE GROWING.
Wow, what a trip it’s been to see how far we’ve come in the last 7 years. It’s cliché to say, but I am really excited to see this year come together. We’ve already signed 21 exhibitors and are on track to have the largest exhibit hall yet! And speaking of the exhibit hall, it is the first one I’ve seen that has windows! Overlooking the water. So not only will you get to see all the great exhibitors but you’ll have a great view to take in as you are chatting.
We also scouted a few places for the AstriCon All Conference Party. We found one place that we absolutely LOVE. It’s a dueling piano bar just blocks from the hotel and could provide hours of endless entertainment. What do you think? Comment below, we want to hear your thoughts as we plan this party. It is, after all, for you.
I hope we do end up partying here!!
So don’t miss out on all the excitement! Register now before Poseidon eats up all the great early bird specials!
Conference Call Etiquette
Polycom, one of the premier listings in AsteriskExchange.com, recently shared a helpful guide to conference call etiquette. Here are their Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts of a Conference Call:
Do’s
- Watch the clock. Make good use of everyone’s time.
- Come to the call with an agenda, clear objectives, and role expectations.
- Make sure to provide a quick overview at the start of the call as well as a quick summary at the end of the call.
- Introduce all parties on the call. Always introduce participants to each other and acknowledge new attendees as they join the call.
- Ensure participants are following along. When referring to slides during a presentation, number the slides and clarify as you move from one slide to the next so that all callers can easily follow along.
- Pay attention. This may seem to be a given, but it’s not always that easy to do.
- When you’re on a conference call at your desk, it’s often very tempting to check e-mail, work on documents or do other personal work. Typing on a keyboard is disruptive, however, and callers can hear you. In addition, you may miss the flow of conversation and progress in the meeting.
- When you’re in a conference room, avoid using your mobile device to check e-mail during the conference call.
- Forward incoming calls to voicemail. When joining the conference call from your desk, be sure other incoming calls will not cause a disruption.
- Turn off your cell phone ringer, pager, etc.
- Speak using a ‘normal’ tone of voice. Today’s conference phones offer excellent acoustic clarity. Yelling or speaking too quietly is distracting.
Don’ts
- Don’t put the call on hold. If you have to step away, use mute hold because music is very disruptive to others on a call.
- Don’t interrupt. Give others a chance to finish what they are saying before speaking.
- Don’t have side conversations. They are a distraction to those listening from the other end.
From phones to software to complete business communication solutions, the Asterisk Exchange showcases solutions that extend the power of Asterisk. To find conference phones that are certified to work well with Asterisk, visit the Polycom listing on AsteriskExchange.com.
You are currently browsing the archives for the digium category.
