Fantasy Utility IVR

No one IVR implementation is flawless, but we've brought together some of the best task submenus from different utility IVRs to create a dream IVR—or something close to it. For this report, the E Source Utility Customer Care Service is trying something new: an online report that allows you to listen to real examples of IVR menus rather than reading them on a page. We present sound clips of some of the best treatments we found for the tasks utility customers most want to accomplish on the telephone along with analysis of what makes these "good," and where even they fall short of perfection. We've removed company names from the sound clips and, in some cases, made other small deletions to improve the "customer" experience.

We based our choices on established best practices and the results of our recent benchmark study, in which five reviewers listened to 103 utility IVRs.

Here is just one part of our Fantasy Utility IVR report:

BEGIN Report Excerpt







Analysis

The main purpose of this option is to collect billing and payment options in one place. Payment and Billing Options is another menu section that often falls short, whether because the payment options are scattered around the menu, because the caller authentication routine is misplaced and locks customers out of public information such as payment locations, because the payment option names are vague or jargony, or because of any of several other missteps. The example we offer here avoids these pitfalls.

Best practice Things to avoid

END Report Excerpt

More Information

	- E Source Utility Customer Care Service
	- E Source 2007 Review of North American Electric and Gas Company IVRs (115 KB PDF)