One Great Thing You Absolutely Must Do for Your VUI, part 3
Let’s say you’re already doing all of those great things we discussed in parts 1 and 2. You’ve considered the context of the caller and the mindset. You’ve implemented ways to keep your caller’s experience seamless- you’ve got automated payments and other behind-the-scenes processes in place to keep things humming along and proactive notifications are already handing common patterns in your customer interactions. But, there comes the day when your customer is going to have a question or issue, and they’re going to check out your website and/or call you. Possibly both.
Reality check: your customer is not 100% focused on what they are doing as they call you or use your website. Most likely, interacting with your company is just one of a dozen or even a hundred things they’re working on that day.
Which brings us to our third point about customer mindset:
They aren’t paying attention to you.
Say your customer is online. They have a question, and pull up your website for answers. Remember, they’re one tab away from their next listicle or slide gallery. And attention span these days is short.
The average page visit lasts a little less than a minute. (Nielsen-Norman Group)
Users are ruthless. Within 10 seconds, they will determine whether or not they can use your site. If they are having some kind of issue, they may very well reach for the phone, which of course means generating an expensive call. When the IVR greets them, they’ll go for the zero, which makes that call even more expensive.
This is where ‘Understand your customer’ really comes into play. Is your website focused on what your visitor really needs? In other words, have you researched customer goals? And then optimized your layout to highlight the correct choices according to those goals? Does your layout support this focus?
On the phone, are your prompts clear and easy to understand? Are they short? Are they slow enough to optimize comprehension — but not so slow that they are irritating?
It’s easy enough to recommend clear design, but it’s harder to do. Keeping the focus on your customer and guiding design decisions according to their needs will help you find your way through the swamp of confusion to the highlands of clear customer experience.
Understand your customer — everything else is second.