Is Your IVR Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Spoken Smart IVR Case StudyRenée Epple, Guthy|Renker

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The clientIntroduction to Guthy|Renker

Guthy|Renker is a $1.5 billion direct

marketing company, one of the largest

and most respected in the world, with

distribution in 68 countries. Founded in

1988, Guthy|Renker has discovered

and developed dozens of well-loved,

high quality consumer products in the

beauty, skincare, entertainment and

wellness categories. Familiar brands

include Proactiv, Wen Hair Care by

Chaz Dean, and Cindy Crawford’s

Meaningful Beauty.

• Proactiv

• Wen Hair Care by Chaz Dean

• Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty

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ChallengeDirect Marketing company sought responsiveness

Starting point

• Seeking an IVR

• Replace incumbent menu-based IVR

Basic needs

• Identify the caller

• Determine caller intent

• Automatically and efficiently route the caller to the correct queue

Requirements

• Nimble A/B testing capabilities

• Test every IVR call flow element

• Test, evaluate and iterate regularly

• Proven user-friendly and responsive experience

• Incremental improvement with each IVR iteration

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GoalsStated goals for Spoken Smart IVR implementation at G|R

• Improve caller identification rates

• Improve caller intent rates and thereby routing accuracy

• Evaluate access to agile IVR interactions for continual testing and improvement

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ApproachPilot plan implementation and evaluation

Pilot

• Implement at 60-day pilot for a percentage of call volume for a single brand

• Focus on immediate goals of improving caller ID and caller intent rates

Evaluate

• Use caller ID and caller intent rates to determine success

• Experiment with very important ability to iterate the IVR to determine if the flexibility was valuable

Expand

• If both the immediate goals and flexibility experiment were successful, expand to full call volume for that brand and to other brands as well

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ProcessRedundant, live-live system for reliability

• Spoken Smart IVR implemented as a fully redundant cloud

• Geographically diverse data centers

• Live-live configuration

• High availability with no business disruption

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ProcessIntegrated call flow

ACD integrationThe Spoken Smart IVR was integrated with the existing ACD, which created a session ID and then handed the call to the Spoken Smart IVR.

Spoken Smart IVRKey tasks were: determine ANI match, ID the caller and the caller intent. Attributes from client data cache were used to determine the best call flow match for caller intent.

HandoffThen the SSIVR hands the call back to the legacy ACD to route the call to a self-service IVR module or a live agent with screen pop of caller ID and intent.

A gradual transition

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Rollout kickoffOne brand, 10% of call volume

• Began with a core brand• Spoken Smart IVR handled 10% of the

core brand call volume• 60 days• Success• In that time, iterated through a dozen A/B

panels • Showed definite improved match rate for

caller ID and intent

• Rolled out to 100% of core brand call volume

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Additional brand rolloutIn two phases: 30% one week and 100% the following

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Results: 10% containment10% containment in self-service for one brand

• Call data revealed that callers were unclear on how to use the product

• Added voiceover to the call flow instructing on the product’s proper use

• 10% of eligible calls were handled exclusively within the self-service Spoken Smart IVR

The biggest benefit of the Spoken Smart IVR is the ability to grow and iterate the IVR

in a fluid and continuous manner.

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Results: 47% containment47% containment in self-service for order status queries

• Caller uses order status keyword such as “package” or “shipment”

• Automated API pulls up past and upcoming ship dates and package tracking information

• Spoken Smart IVR reads back whichever is most applicable based on business rules

• Results:• 23% self-service containment

rate for order status queries• 24% referral to other self-

service• 25% well-qualified callers to

agents to place orders

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Results: putting wrong info to good useAn innovative solution to a call flow conundrum

• Callers were asked for house number

• Spoken team noticed some callers were entering 10 digits• Guessed that the callers were

entering a phone number• Suggested to run the input as

phone numbers

• New initiative to automatically run any 10-digit input as a phone number

• Returned an additional 2% match

The Spoken system’s agility and flexibility allows us to immediately address caller issues that we discover through the call

data.

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Business impactMeasured results

Increased caller ID rateIncreased caller identification rate by around 10 percentage points

Increased caller intent rateIncreased caller intent identification by around 10 percentage points

Self-service containmentContained 10-45% of callers in customized self-service modules

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Key benefitsA flexible solution providing valuable insights

Agility

Provided a nimble system for simple A/B testing to iterate the best caller experience possible

Improve

Improved caller ID and caller intent rated by around 10 percentage points

Innovation

Offered productive and creative solutions to challenges

Reliability

Upgraded to a fully redundant, high availability cloud system

Professionals

Engaged, action-oriented thought leaders were fully invested in understanding and driving client business success

This is the smartest and most engaged vendor partner team I can ever recall

working with. The Spoken team always added incremental thought leadership that continually takes the dialogue above and

beyond.

Is Your IVR Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Spoken Smart IVR Case StudyRenée Epple, Guthy|Renker