The IVR Revolution Will NOT Be Televised: We Predicted it First

Zachary McGeary | February 25, 2008, 12:08 PM

A recent BusinessWeek story highlights the dwindling popularity of the pro-consumer crusade established by GetHuman.com.

Page views on the site have dwindled from about 40,000 a day in the spring of 2006 to some 4,000. The discussion board, while still active, has quieted down since 2006, when thousands of comments were streaming in. And 18 months after the "standard" was announced—companies that adopted the criteria would have earned the right to use an "auditory icon," or tone, that would signal to callers they had good service—not one company has registered.

Back in November 2005 we highlighted one of the holes in this straight-to-agent methodology:

While I love the story, I don't really see much of an upside to this technique. In some cases, sure, this may help. But depending on how the business you are contacting operates, you may actually be compromising or even negating the potential for actually getting directly to the most appropriate agent or even time savings.

This ongoing story begs the question "How much and in which ways do customers really care about IVR as a service touch point?" In short, they simply don't. Yes, satisfaction has remained notoriously low, and has even experienced some erosion over the last 6 years. But consumer adoption of IVR is not "opt-in", as most consumers call customer service expecting to speak with an agent.

While getting to a live agent as quickly as possible would fit within consumers' ideals for customer servicing, I imagine most have found that they are still spending the time identifying themselves and getting bounced around from agent to agent as their particular servicing needs are made clear. So does getting to agent as quickly as possible really lower time to resolution? I'm afraid not.

I must point out, however, that most IVR systems to date are still not well-integrated with agent desktop apps. Consumers are still largely required to provide information about themselves through the automated system for routing and queuing purposes, and then required to provide the same information again to CSRs when their inquiry is ultimately handled.

As far as the failure of the GetHuman standard goes, Paul English is spot on:

English learned that no matter how effective online consumer crowds may be, full-blown change still takes the passion and energy of committed individuals. "If you're going to try to do a standard," he says, "you need someone who is really going to drive it."

JupiterResearch's take is that dismal IVR performance has left so many consumers disenchanted that they feel they are facing a losing, uphill battle. Even in a world of dissatisfaction and frustration with IVR, it appears that apathy and resignation are the more dominant consumer attitudinal characteristics. The battle for IVR improvement will continue to be one of attrition, not change or revolution.