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:

• Build and leverage a coaching relationship with every employee
• 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 Steps to 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 steps you can easily 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

Hand-on Lab: Developing an IVR Migration Path

Chapter 4 - Streamlining the Functions  Receiving 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

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

Chapter 5 - 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 6 - Human Factors, Ergonomics, & Usability Made Simple

• The reasons callers hate IVR
• Why speech recognition hasn't gotten 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 7 - Open Dialogue Designs

The differences between open and closed dialogues

Chapter 1 - The Business Case

• Introduction to IVR
• The telephone user interface
• The IVR business case
• Speech recognition migration
• Evaluating IVR quality
• Introduction to Speech Technology
• Vocabularies, grammars, and accuracy
• Types of speech dialogues
• Voice portals

Chapter 2 - Strategy and Structure

• Design principles and planning
• High level call flow

Chapter 3 - Top-Down Design

• Use-cases and Desk-testing
• Greetings and opening menus
• Speech, psychology and ergonomics

Chapter 4 - The Voice User Interface

• Understanding Confidence
• Gathering User Input
• Phonetic Transcription
• Why "help" doesn't help

Day 2

Chapter 5 - All About Menus

• Introduction to Menus
• Basic Scripting
• Style and personality
• Scripting Exercises
• Re-crafting scripts for speech

Chapter 6 - Timing and Error Recovery

• Pauses, Read-Back & Confirmation
• Handling OOG (out -of -grammar)
• Drill-Down Techniques

Chapter 7 - Putting it All Together

• Scripting Exercises
• Introduction to Voice Biometrics
• Top 10 Reasons IVR Projects Fail

Registration Fees

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

June 9-10, '10	Boston, MA	Hyatt Cambridge
Aug 25-26, '10	Chicago, IL	Hyatt Lodge
Oct 27-28, '10	Las Vegas, NV	Platinum Hotel & Spa

Improving the Effectiveness of IVR, Speech Recognition, and Self-Service Systems immediately follows these courses in select locations:

• Contact Center Strategy: How Leaders Drive Results
• Contact Center Technology: Topics, Trends and Truths
• Contact Center Metrics: Tactical Uses That Drive Performance
• Call Center Supervisor Training and Certification
• Understanding Call Center Fundamentals

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.