Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories VUI Guidelines and Interactive Session

1. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. VUI Guidelines Phil Shinn, Ph.D. pshinn@genesyslab.com Principal Consultant

2. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 2 Outline Interactive session Introduce a couple of topics Outline pros & cons Open discussion for each item Solicit opinions Other topics?

3. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 3 Source VUID yahoo group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vuids 288 members since August of 2003 885 messages Trolls & flames

4. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 4 Topics Sorry Help Naming the persona Press or say Timings Responding to profanity Give me an agent

5. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 5 Sorry The time for Im sorry, I didnt get that is over. Stick a fork in it. Its done. See Nass & Brave, chapter 14 To err is interface; to blame, complex Dont ever blame the caller Taking blame results in decreased perceived confidence Scape-goat the system Too many sorrys becomes meaningless Its a lie that an automated system is actually sorry Its a waste of time

6. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 6 Help Should Help be a global command? Pro: people might say it Con: misrecognition attractor Giangola, Balogh & Cohen, Voice User Interface Design In general, callers must be taught about universal commands, or else they wont use them. One approach is to mention the help command in the initial prompt, which the user hears when they first enter the systemfor example Welcome to Western Valley Bank. If you have a problem while youre using this service, just say Help (p. 123) If a system requires users to say help in order to use it, it is inherently flawed. May be cultural/linguistic differences in how help is perceived

7. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 7 Help 2 For most major VUI teams, help is no longer used/advertised as a global. I find this discussion very interesting, as I was not aware of the fact that help is no longer used as a global. Ill take a hard stand against help for two reasons: lack of empirical evidence of it happening in the wild; focusing on help draws attention away from OOG utterences

8. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 8 Naming the Persona Hi, Im Nim, and Im designing a corporate voice portal. Question is, should the system introduce itself with a name, like Hi, Im Nim (or whatever). Back in the day, a lot of systems were designed with this feature, but Ive noticed more and more are not. Nim Chimpsky Pros Makes the persona more real Gives callers something to refer to Seems cool Cons Makes the persona more real Gives callers something to refer to Seems cool

9. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 9 Naming the persona 2 Nim, you have answered your own paradoxical question: your pros are negated by your cons. Forget what others have done. This is no place for monkey see monkey do. Never monkey around with people- aping personas. Might be benefits for naming internally The uncanny valley creep factor: cavemen & lizards Misrecognition attractors around 5% of our callers were using Claire in their utterances Content versus the media

10. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 10 Press or Say To do X, press or say 1. For Y, press or say 2 Pros People can use the application hands-free Punching buttons on a cell phone requires breaking the audio channel Cons Every prompt now longer Background noise can cause misrecognition events More expensive

11. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 11 Press or Say 2 Press one has morphed into Press or say one and almost no one elects to say one primarily because theyd feel like an idiot talking out loud to absolutely no one. is the most degenerate approach one can possibly dream of, and should be forbidden by the Geneva convention Numberspeak is effective in dehumanizing and demeaning a caller Typical of early speech systems and still suprisingly prevalent today Responsible in large part for the slow acceptance of telephony voice user interfaces and serious contender for the award for Most brain dead component of all time.

12. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 12 Timings End of speech timeout: 3-5 secs Incompletetimeout default .25 secs Completetimeout: .25 secs Maxspeechtimeout: 60 secs Ep.endseconds default 1 sec Termtimeout Timeout: 7 seconds 5 secs pre-speech Single words (e.g. yes/no questions): 0.75 sec Short menus (e.g. checking): 1 sec Long menus (e.g. get my balance): 1.5 secs String sequences (e.g. account numbers): 2 sec 4 digit PINS: 1.5 sec Phone numbers: 2 sec Credit card: 2.5 sec Longer for older populations

13. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 13 Responding to Profanity Should we put give me a freakin agent in the global grammar? If so, how should we respond? Pro: Less OOG Con: misrecognition attractor If detected, perhaps transfer the caller to an agent? We routinely add expletive words and phrases into our grammars when they fit and move the conversation forward, so someone can say Hell yes (or better) to a yes/no question Angry people versus wise-guys

14. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 14 Give me an agent A gethuman standard If people want out of automation, get them out as quickly as possible. Can say something like OK, you want to speak with an agent. Just so I can direct your call, are you calling about X? The current expected wait time is seconds. Virtual Hold

15. 2003 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. 15 Other Topics? Phil Shinn philshinn@yahoo.com pshinn@genesyslabs.com 310 488 9267 http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vuids