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Article : The Importance of Creating An Effective Voice User Interface

Organisations that use recorded voice to communicate with customers are beginning to realise that the best practice of Voice User Interface design, (VUI) is as critical as their logo, web site, advertising, or any other interface with customers. The VUI becomes the branded persona of an enterprise and as such, is as vital as any other form of communication with customers or stakeholders.

Moving away from the realms of a simple voice prompt recording, which communicates a straightforward message to the caller, the VUI is used in an advanced speech recognition (ASR) system to interact with customers in a way that replicates natural conversation. An effective VUI provides efficient interactions that solicit valid responses from callers with a minimum of prompting. Issues such as how to change topics, speaking in phrases, confirmations and feedback are all handled in a natural and intuitive manner within a conversational VUI–based application.

The VUI concept must also be seen as much more than a delivery process of technical systems. It is a communication component important in the vital interaction with an organisation, which must satisfy callers and meet business objectives. Key to meeting these objectives is the issue of an organisation's persona i.e. what the VUI appears to represent to the caller. Some organisations require the soft, soothing confident tones and dialogue structure of a middle-aged professional woman might use, while others require the more dynamic and excitable character of a twenty-something male graduate. Personas create brand recognition, improve the perception of a company and allow for enjoyable interactions that solicit appropriate responses. Understanding the user ensures a compelling, branded user experience, not a 'one size fits all' design style. This white paper sets out to look at how the VUI can be used most effectively and in particular some ways we can derive the most accurate persona definitions for organisations of all types.

For the purpose of defining the intended audience of this white paper, although the principles of establishing an effective VUI would apply to a one-man band, it is probable the resources involved in doing so may not. It is also possible that in a smaller organisation, the key figures are used for the actual Voice Talent because the organisation is marketed on established personal relationships – in this scenario it is best practice to agree whether 'persona definition' is important whilst mindful that "Business Neutral" can lead to system business objective failure. This said, automated call distributors are now becoming commonplace in SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) so, from organisations with simple call directories to corporates with advanced speech recognition portal applications, the need to understand the impact of the VUI is of equal importance. Within these organisations Directors, Senior Management, Contact Centre Managers, IT staff, Sales and Marketing personnel should all benefit from the content held within.

THE BACKGROUND TO THE RISE OF THE VUI

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Since the widespread acceptance of the telephone, businesses have received and serviced inbound calls from customers, prospects, business partners, and employees or placed outbound calls as part of a company's marketing activities. As call volumes increased, companies looked for ways to handle this increased traffic. In the seventies, automation began in the form of Interactive Voice Response (IVR). Today, more than 2.5 million IVR ports are in service, used at close to 50% of companies with formal contact centres using Automatic Call Distribution (ACDs), as shown in the diagram below. On average, 15% of inbound contacts are handled via self-service. Telephone self-service using IVR gained market acceptance for many solid and tangible business reasons.

Conventional wisdom once said all customers phoning your company's number needed and wanted to speak with an agent to assist them with their service needs – a simple analogy might be the use of message pagers where you had to talk to a bureau agent to send your message compared to the 100's of millions of messages sent via mobile SMS messaging.

However, after long waits in queues, long service phone calls, and inconsistent or incorrect information and service treatment, those same customers said there had to be a better way – and there was – automated self-service. Callers were able to access information, update records, and perform transactions, both in and outside of normal business hours. They received consistent, accurate information, often quicker and simpler than having to wait in a queue for an agent. Blocked calls were all but eliminated and abandoned calls, average wait time in queue, and average call length were all reduced.

Speech Applications
For many applications, touchtone menus were confusing, inflexible and made completing certain transactions long and laborious. Callers became frustrated and dissatisfied. Many simply "zeroed out" and waited for an agent or worse, abandoned the call. The touchtone interface created a longer, more costly call, agents' workloads were not reduced, and they were still forced to take routine calls. Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) has eliminated this problem.

New ASR capability combined with IVR offers the advantages of automation in a much more user-friendly way. No interface is more natural than simply speaking your request into a telephone. Speech recognition dramatically reduces on-hold time and eliminates confusing hierarchical touchtone menus. Consumers have reacted very favourably to speech recognition with around 83% of users indicating they prefer Speech to DTMF input. Early deployments in the business, finance, and insurance vertical markets clearly suggest that Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) is not simply replacing agents. It is replacing entire DTMF self-service platforms because the call avoidance economics that justified these platforms are being exhausted at five or six menu options. Speech recognition systems deployed using the principles of VUI design are in fact new interactive channels.

In May 2000, speech recognition specialists Nuance, completed a comprehensive study of speech-system users. This study found that the overall satisfaction rating with these systems exceeded 87% (see diagram below). Many respondents also preferred speech systems to agents because of the consistent service level this medium provides. A recent Frost & Sullivan study noted that 50% to 60% of callers who skip complex touchtone systems are comfortable using speech recognition for the same application. Studies by Meridien Research from October 2000 have shown that up to 70% of the straightforward calls currently received by contact centres can be easily automated with voice recognition.

Natural speech is the communication of choice for humans and this makes it easier for a user to accept and benefit from voice-activated services. It is also getting easier to deploy telephone speech technology and the public is already accepting deployed systems. The cost of speech recognition has dropped. Higher-level development tools are getting applications to the field faster, easier, and cheaper, indeed some applications are delivered as a complete system or service requiring virtually no development. Call centres and IVR systems can be automated with flexible customer interaction. Systems will answer the phone and connect you to a person or department by asking you to simply saying the name with no need for an extension number or difficult spelling by keypad. Commercial directory access systems are providing flexible voice based "yellow pages." With 1.5 billion telephone users versus only 363 million PC users worldwide, of 13% of companies surveyed planning a new contact centre, 80% conscious of this ratio, are planning new contact centres which include a voice interface.

THE VOICE USER INTERFACE (VUI)
Introduction
As demonstrated, developments in speech recognition technology have enabled the interaction of people and automated systems over the telephone, to happen in a much more flexible way than the touch-tone keypad. It is speech recognition technology that has truly created the need for the voice user interface – deployment of speech recognition in automated applications is a major step in capability, which has changed an industry. Text-to-speech allows information in text form to be read to a caller. And speaker verification can verify the identity of a caller by their voice characteristics for secure transactions or to control access to sensitive systems or information. These technologies when encompassed in VUI design should not be under estimated. Despite its tremendous success, the telephone is far from having reached its potential.

With a properly designed VUI, users talk to an application, which uses speech recognition, using everyday conversational language. Talking to a system designed around the principles of VUI design is the closest thing to talking to a real person that current speech recognition technology allows - users quickly and efficiently accomplish their communication objectives. For users in a fast moving world, the VUI–based application is a powerful solution. The satisfaction rate of conversational VUI–based systems is extremely high because they are:

  • Simple to Use: Users do not need to follow a rigid structure. They simply say what they want, when they want, speeding the time it takes to accomplish tasks.

  • Natural: Phrases can be spoken in everyday language, increasing user acceptance.

  • Efficient: More can be accomplished in a shorter time, increasing user productivity.

  • Interpersonal: Natural conversation is used to access and control the system - a well designed conversational VUI system speaks clearly and is easy to understand helping callers to anticipate the next phrase or action.

  • User-Controlled: The voice of the user controls the system's actions at any time, eliminating the possibility of getting lost in sub-menus.

The development of a VUI is a task that requires considered design and planning, and below we give some thought to what makes a successful VUI.

Personas
Careful development of a VUI will create a personality that makes telephone-based customer self-service more conversational and, in turn more natural. This 'persona' is the consistent character that is captured by the voice and audio environment of a voice-enabled application. But importantly, a persona, when combined with knowledge of an organisations' customers and stakeholders, can make an extremely effective marketing tool which for many will serve as the public face of the organisation.

Research by Nuance has shown that callers always associate the system voice with specific characteristics, even if the system was not designed to exemplify any particular character. If an organisation uses voice recordings to communicate with customers, the organisation has a persona, regardless of the degree of thought that has gone into it. An unintentional persona can ruin a system and also damage the brand an organisation has worked hard to develop in its other contact channels, perhaps the Television and Web offerings. Any voice prompt recording representing an organisation will instantly give callers an impression in terms of age, image, attitude etc. Nuance research has shown that callers attribute human personality traits to the speech system they use. A professional 'business-like' persona can, to some users, seem terse or abrupt. A cheery and youthful persona can portray an impression of a carefree organisation. A monotone voice could well make a company sound dull and boring. Any organisation, which uses IVR to enable its customer base to interact automatically, has a Persona, which more often than not fits like a cheap suit. It is important for organisations to get away from a 'one-size-fits-all' philosophy.

In recent experiments conducted by the Centre for Communication Interface Research (CCIR) at Edinburgh University, different systems' personalities were created and users' responses to the different voices were evaluated. Two personalities of either sex, were created with the intention that they would portray young, streetwise agents and therefore appeal to younger users. Dialogue such as 'hi', 'okay', 'excellent' and 'cool' were used by both personas to reinforce the impression of youth.

The results showed quite clearly that the majority of younger users did prefer these younger voice personalities for automated telephone banking. However, the test also showed that some of the younger users were put off by their vernacular and fast-paced delivery. In designing system dialogues, CCIR believe that "It is extremely important to strike the right balance between creating an interesting and conversational dialogue, while keeping it mainstream enough to appeal to a wide user group."

Taking this thinking a stage further, applications exist to identify current customers from the caller's number; so, it is also possible to change the persona to match with a caller's profile. For example, you may wish to greet high frequency customers in a different way to that used to greet less regular customers. In portal applications, it is practical to give users a choice of several personas to choose from, at an early stage in the interaction. Not only does this allow the caller a high degree of personalisation, but it can provide important market research also.

The process of developing persona in the VUI needs to be a user-centric process with the caller in mind at all times. It also a process that is reliant on input from all areas of an organisation, primarily from marketing and sales through to call centre staff, and finally the IT team. Clearly, the most important step to developing a successful voice persona is to understand the user. This process is easiest where there is a tightly pre-defined user group. For example, the style of an automated dialogue for a teenage pop group will be very different to a service for checking share indexes. Gender of the voice, regional variety, style and pace all contribute to the overall impression of the service.

CCIRs important work on callers attitudes to different personas prevalent in VUI's has also recently tested the varying attitudes to accent, gender and professional status of the speaker. The results show that gender and regional accent have a definite effect on users' perception of the service. Men in particular preferred a Female Southern British English voice to a Male Southern British English voice, whereas women did not show a significant preference to either. There was also a tendency for users to prefer an accent from their own region. Whereas both of these points may seem self-apparent, the research also highlighted other important factors that organisations need to consider when choosing a voice for recording of voice prompts. American accents in particular did not prove popular when used for a mainly UK-based audience, despite their obvious appeal in Radio and Television advertising.

On the recording of voice prompts, CCIR urges aiming for the highest degree of standards possible. "The design of automated telephone services must take into account the gender and regional accent of the voice. For greater effectiveness and good engineering practice, highest possible quality recording of voices should be maintained and where possible the use of a professional speaker is recommended."

Personalising the VUI to the User
As we have already mentioned, a high level of personalisation will result in greater caller satisfaction levels. If users are given a choice of several personas to choose from at an early stage in the interaction, the design of the VUI should reflect the persona chosen – this personalises the service yet further. It allows the user to log or register with the system, exactly how they want to interact with it and how they are going to get what they want from it.

Callers offered personalisation options perceive the system to be more user friendly. In another research programme carried out at the CCIR, participants' attitudes were measured to a banking application where users could personalise their service in such a way that certain pieces of information ie an account balance reading, were given as soon as the user called. The overwhelming majority of participants in this study were positive to the personalised service.

The Wording of Voice Prompts
In most applications we require the VUI to perform a wide variety of different functions and so we have to consider how best to design the voice prompts to solicit this information and satisfy the user. This can involve asking the user a question, offering them choices from a menu, providing information and keeping the caller informed of what's happening at the time. There are a number of general principles that relate to how we formulate the choice of words and style that you could apply to all VUI design. The Centre of Communication Interface Research offers the following advice when considering the dialogue for the recording of your voice prompts:

Keep Messages Short and Clear
Messages should be kept short and concise, as long messages are difficult for callers to follow and can cause frustration. It is also vital that when the voice script is composed spoken dialogue is kept in mind. A sentence that appears to be grammatically correct and precise on paper may not sound natural when spoken.

Use the Imperative
Use the imperative but keep it polite. Verbs when used in the imperative become commands e.g. Please enter your PIN. To emphasise politeness the use of a 'kind' intonation in the recording can compensate for the directness in the use of the imperative.

Be Consistent
Make consistent use of terms throughout the dialogue. In addition, maintain the same style of language and level of formality throughout.

Never Blame the Caller
Always word messages in such a way as to avoid blaming the caller for failure by the system to recognise spoken input or process data supplied by the caller.

Consider Context
Ensure that messages make sense in the context of immediately preceding messages and also in the context of local help, fail and error messages.

Emphasise Key Words
Whenever possible use valid keywords within service messages. Callers will then acquire the valid vocabulary and will be more likely to use it in response to the message in the future.

Instructions – Order of Information
In instructions given by the service to the caller, always tell the caller how to respond before prompting for the response. This helps to avoid the caller responding before the message is finished. This is less important when barge-in is implemented but still remains good practice.

Landmarks
The user's experience is led by the character, which embodies the system – the persona. In turn, this can be supported by landmarks, which are sometimes also referred to as 'earcons' or 'non-speech audio'. Landmarks alert the user to which particular point in the dialogue they are at. These can help in the users' navigation of the system, reassuring them they are in the right place and providing clues to successfully move on. Landmarks are important where there is a central menu with different sub menus coming after. They afford the user a greater understanding of the information being presented in that they can easily keep track of how much more information to expect from the service.

Importantly landmarks can also be used to reinforce the brand message. By finding a way of extending the brand recognition across the multiple touch points using landmarks, organisations can increase the richness of the brand.

This white paper has highlighted some elements important in the development of the Voice User Interface from the early days of IVR deployment, moving on through the progression of systems designed for automated speech interactions. Research shows that speech recognition is fast becoming a mass-market solution that is preferred in many cases to human operators, touchtone and the web. The growth in speech applications is put down to the speed, ease of use, control and the freedom of natural language speech systems.

The paper then goes on to illustrate the importance of a well thought-out voice user interface and the benefits this can bring, showing briefly what goes into successful VUI development. There are tangible and real benefits from producing a VUI system that provides users with efficient and fulfilling interactions. The benefits can take a number of forms from the decrease in the numbers of calls dealt with by agents, through to improving the richness of a brand and improving the customer perception of an organisation and ultimately contributing to increased channel revenue streams.

The issue of 'personas' is of particular relevance to most organisations because, as stated in the introduction, many will use recorded speech of some form and so already have one – intentional or not. In many cases, creating the voice persona of an organisation will become as important to an organisation's communications strategy as their logo. A well-crafted persona contributes to ease of use and ultimately the satisfaction of using a voice enabled system. Custom personas are designed to meet the specific needs of a particular customer but it is also possible to buy an off-the-shelf 'standard' persona. Although they will not exactly match an organisation's branding goals they can at least allow organisations to develop automated telephone services that give consistent and high quality experiences.

As the applications using speech develop ever further in terms of what they can achieve, it is likely that the importance of VUI design will grow yet further as a priority within an organisations' communications plan and come under even-greater scrutiny. As more processes become automated through the phone and web the Voice User Interface is extremely likely to play a vital part in an organisation's success or failure.


About The Company
Syntellect Inc. is a provider speech enabled customer, employee and supply chain self-service software solutions and hosted services which play an integral role in an enterprise's full customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

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