(CBC)

People who are turned off by the chirpy automated voices that have replaced human receptionists at many large companies, take note: interactive voice response systems are about to become a whole lot more common.

Most people are used to being prompted by a recorded voice to "Press 1 for customer service" or "Say 'yes' for English" when they telephone a big company. Interactive voice response (IVR) systems have long been the domain of major banks and telcos. But they are now rapidly moving downmarket to smaller companies as vendors such as Nortel, Avaya and Cisco turn their attention to the untapped small and medium business (SMB) market in Canada and the U.S.

These vendors have created stripped-down products and service packages that run on their own servers so that the customer doesn't need special equipment or technical experts. This makes it easier for smaller businesses to adopt the technology, says Ian Jacobs, senior analyst at global consultancy Frost & Sullivan's Los Angeles office.

About 65 per cent of 150 North American SMBs surveyed last year by the research company said they plan to adopt the technology, and of those, 48 per cent said they plan to implement an IVR system within two years.

Travel, health care and retail are big growth areas, says Jacobs, and small public-sector entities are also implementing IVR — particularly cash-strapped municipalities looking for inexpensive ways to deliver services to citizens.

"Large companies have been driving their customers crazy with IVR for some time, and now it's time for SMBs to do the same," Jacobs says.

Get used to speaking to machines

While many customers say they despise IVR systems, Jacobs says he believes that as improved technology infiltrates more and more companies, people will gradually start choosing the machines rather than waiting to speak to live agents.

One of the reasons Jacobs cites is practical. Customer support is a popular target for staffing cutbacks during economic downturns, so people who want human assistance by phone will likely start facing longer line-ups and delays.

Customers might also increasingly find themselves subjected to sales pitches in order to get help from a human, he adds.

"One way companies are trying to finance their customer service centres is by turning them into profit-generating engines," he said. "So, when you speak to live agents, they will probably try to sell you new products and services. It will be less hassle to talk to the voice system."

Persuading the average person to embrace the technology wholeheartedly will take time because of damage done by previous generations of IVR systems. Stories of desperate customers trapped in voice-menu labyrinths abound — so much so that entrepreneur Paul English inadvertently started a major grass roots movement in 2005 when he posted an IVR cheat sheet called "Get Human" on his blog. It contains tricks and tips to help people break out of voice-response loops and get straight to a human customer service agent.

Millions of irate consumers responded to English's blog with their complaints, and the movement has since grown into a consumer advocacy organization, also called Get Human, devoted to developing better IVR standards and rating companies' customer service. Shoddy design is the true cause of consumer fury, not opposition to IVR technology itself, says Jacobs. ATMs, for example, have evolved quick, convenient menus over time, and today, few people would prefer to wait in line for a teller to complete routine banking transactions.

"Decades of work has been done to standardize the graphical user interface [of ATMs], but the same is not true for voice," says Jacobs.

The proliferation of mobile devices is spurring the development of more advanced voice interfaces, he adds, since voice commands are a good fit for devices that aren't big enough for a keyboard or that have to be used on the go.

Pushing the limits

However, technology isn't the only design consideration for IVR systems. There are cognitive limits to the amount of information people can take in aurally, says Walter Rolandi, a human-factors psychologist and speech applications adviser at Get Human.

"The eye can scan a screen or newspaper for visual information quickly and pluck out what it needs," he says. "But by phone, information comes in serially, one bit after another, so it's slower."

He agrees consumers are not resistant to IVR systems that allow them to complete tasks faster and more efficiently than dealing with humans. But he says many IVR systems insult their customers' dignity and intelligence by forcing them to deal with a machine to sort out problems they know are beyond its abilities.

"The No. 1 complaint at Get Human is that companies make it difficult to speak to a human," says Rolandi. "I've studied thousands of customer calls, and for a large percentage, their needs can't be handled by the IVR system."

IVR standards

Rolandi says many major technology companies, such as Microsoft and Nuance, have paid at least some limited attention to the Get Human movement.

"They made some noises initially about supporting our standards in the face of an avalanche of customer complaints, but once we came out with them [a set of guidelines], they slipped off," he said.

Now, IVR vendors such as Nortel, which uses Get Human's standards as best-practice guidelines, are getting caught in the crossfire in their efforts to satisfy their own business customers when designing IVR systems, says Manish Sharma, director of product strategy at Nortel.

A key recommendation, for example, is to set up IVR systems so customers have the option to speak with a customer service representative right at the outset. "But many of our clients don't want us to expose access to an agent right away until the caller has tried to self-serve a few times and failed," Sharma says. "Cost savings are the primary driver for IVR, and if our clients don't accept a recommendation, we have to respect that."

Finding ways and means to persuade business clients to adopt best practices is a burning topic in many of the news groups and blogs used by voice interface developers, Sharma adds.

"Almost every month, there's a discussion around this issue: How do we educate business so they support these best practices? We know what's best from a user-interface perspective, but our recommendations are shot down because it may end up costing them more money if their customers have easy access to agents. Designers are always looking for help around the world for points that can help them convince business customers."

Rolandi believes there are hidden costs when companies take a penny-pinching approach to IVR design that aren't being factored into the long-term equation.

In the best of all worlds, a product would never fail, the cheque would always be delivered, the claim always filed on time. But part of the problem with IVR systems is that people are likely calling a customer service centre because they are already dissatisfied with something that has gone wrong, so their patience is limited.

"Customers take time from their lives to call a business about a problem they shouldn't have had. Then they must deal with a chirpy robot, which agitates them further," Rolandi says. "It's like poking a bear a few times in the eye before finally turning them loose on a poor agent. And businesses wonder why it's hard to retain staff and churn rates are high [in customer service centres]."

Some companies such as SouthWest Airlines are resisting the IVR trend, says Jacobs. "It's actually a business differentiator for them to always have live agents handle calls. But I don't know how far that model can be extrapolated."

He believes this first wave of using IVR to cut costs will soon end as more and more customers grow disgruntled, and IVR system design will evolve and grow into areas where it genuinely improves customer service.

"A lot of this will be useful as mobile support, but we're being held back in Canada and the U.S. by the lack of advanced handsets. In the near future, we'll get to the stage where routine interactions will be easier via IVR — for example, checking the status of a flight — but you'll expect to go to a live agent to change tickets."

Like it or not, the bottom line is that consumers should expect computerized greetings to become a lot more common in the coming months when they place a call looking for customer assistance. Most small and medium-sized business in North America have plans to introduce the technology in the near future, according to the 2007 Frost & Sullivan survey.

The author is a Toronto-based technology writer.