Best And Worst Of Phone Self-Service Design, 2007

Forrester applied its Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Review methodology to the phone self-service experiences at 16 firms — four of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. None of the companies passed our evaluations, but JPMorgan Chase received the highest overall score. Despite the many flaws we found, we also found a number of best practices, such as essential content that went above and beyond users' needs from companies like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, easy-to-understand language from Dell, and consistently clear feedback from Cingular. To improve phone self-service experiences, customer experience professionals should evaluate IVRs from their users' perspective, improve problems like error handling and inefficient task flows, and conduct ethnographic research with actual users to understand how they can better support users' needs through the IVR alone and in combination with other channels.