Overview

This hands-on training course offers skills and knowledge required to plan, design and implement effective touch-tone and speech recognition self-service systems and introduces key aspects of IVR design including business issues, new technologies, and tuning. You will learn scientifically-proven techniques that increase throughput and IVR containment while reducing errors.

The delivery is hands-on and highly participative. You will learn specific and detailed techniques through numerous examples, case studies, research studies and get a chance to evaluate your current IVR's quality. The course has been updated recently to reflect the latest trends and research.

You will learn how to:

• Use specialized IVR terms and abbreviations
• Design a customer-focused IVR
• Apply principles from human psychology
• Structure menus that are easy to navigate
• Use natural language that helps
• Evaluate current IVR's quality
• Create scripts that communicate your brand and make sense to the customer
• Migrate to speech recognition (if that is appropriate for your application)
• Implement your design successfully with thorough planning and testing
• Make the IVR business case

Who Should Participate

This training course is aimed at those responsible for customer contact applications, including call center directors/VPs, call center managers, and IVR specialists. The course applies to customer service, sales and technical support applications from virtually every industry. The focus of the course is on customer self-service and the technology details required to design effective applications. Both novices and IVR experts have attended and recommend this workshop.

Agenda

Day 1

Chapter 1 - Introduction

• Introductions and overview of the course
• Class goals and learning objectives
• Introduction to the case study used throughout the class

Chapter 2 - A Business View of IVR and Self-Service

• Why telephone self-service is not going away
• How to squeeze more cost savings out of the systems you have
• Improving customer satisfaction with self-service (Yes!)
• Why, how, and when you need speech recognition

Chapter 3 - Small Design Changes That Affect Big Improvements

• Assessing the actual current condition of your IVR
• Quick changes that will provide the maximum improvement at the minimum cost
• Small, low-risk, easy steps you can take to migrate from where your self-service capabilities are now to where you want them to be
• Effective ways to communicate improvement and migration plans to management, the development team, and testers
• Streamlining functions that receive the greatest use
  • Determine which IVR functions are the "Heavy Hitters" serving the majority of your callers
  • How to streamline heavy-hitter IVR functions for speed and accuracy
• What to do with the outlier functions

Hand-on Lab: Developing an IVR Migration Path

In-class Working Session: Why Do People Call the IVR?

Chapter 4- High-Level Design Decisions and Choices

• Getting the "Big Picture" right
• High-level mistakes to avoid that could cost you down the road

Hands-on Lab: Creating the High-Level Call Flow

Chapter 5- Human Factors, Ergonomics, & Usability Made Simple

• The reasons callers hate IVR
• Why speech recognition fails to gain any real traction
• Why you should or should not to use avatars, personalities, male vs. female, and branding
• How to create meaningful and releant test cases

Chapter 6- Dialogue Design, Menu Design and Scripting

• The differences between "open" and "closed" dialogues
• What you need to know about "natural language"
• How to fall back on touch tone when your SLM doesn't work
• Best practices for touch-tone menu design
• How to design speech menus without sacrificing the touch-tone interface
• The best balance between menu breadth and depth
• Simple guidelines for writing menu prompts
• Common pitfalls to avoid in menu scripting

Hands-on Lab: Open Dialogue Designs ("How may I help you?")

In-class Working Session: Organizing Your Menus

Chapter 7 - Handling Error Recovery

• Touch-tone error recovery techniques
  • What to do when users don't interact at all
  • Standard keys for menus, navigation, and skipping backward or forward
  • How to handle pound sign errors
  • Special keying issues that affext mobile phone users
• Speech recognition error recovery techniques
• False acceptance and false rejection errors
• Dealing with ambiguous conditions
• How to handle anger and other emotions

The per student registration fee for this seminar is $1795 (plus applicable VAT/GST for international locations), and includes:

• Comprehensive course manual

• Official Glossary of Speech, IVR and Computer Telephony Terms

• Article reprints

• A certificate of completion

Class begins at 8:30AM and ends at 5PM on the first day and 8:30AM to 3:00PM on the second day. Please arrive at 8:00 the first day to sign-in and meet fellow attendees.

Register securely online with confidence or please call (708) 246-0320.

Seminar Schedule

Aug 25-26, '10	Chicago, IL	Hyatt Lodge
Oct 27-28, '10	Las Vegas, NV	Platinum Hotel & Spa

Maximize Your Training Investment  - Attend Courses Back-to-Back

This course immediately follows related courses in select locations:

• Contact Center Metrics: Tactical Uses That Drive Performance
• Supervisory and Leadership Skills for Contact Center Supervisors
• Understanding Call Center Fundamentals
• Call Center Director Training and Certification

For more training course options, see the entire Contact Center Training Calendar of dates and locations.

For more IT, technical and field support training course options, see the Help Desk, ITIL, and Support Center Calendar.