IVR Bloopers:

Customer Services of a large confectionary manufacturer.

This IVR system is for customers of a large confectionary manufacturer. It's a very simple IVR that involves no user interaction. However it has two big bloopers.

 

- The first word spoken by the IVR is cut off

The problem here is that the IVR picks up and starts speaking too soon, before the connection has genuinely been made. This means the caller does not hear the beginning of the first word. This isn't a big problem but it is so easy to fix - the designers need to add a 'ring-ring' sound to the beginning of the first audio file, so that the only thing that gets truncated is the ringing and therefore unimportant.

Bottom line: the devil is in the detail - small problems like this combine to have negative effect on the customer experience.

 

- Long periods of silence are the biggest sin

After the ringing sound stops playing the caller enters a queue, at which point the system does... nothing at all. While it is busying itself away in the background, the caller is given the silent treatment for 17 seconds. It is likely that a number of callers hang up, thinking that something has 'gone wrong'.

Bottom line: time passes slowly on an IVR. Even a silence as short as 3 seconds can feels like the system has stalled.