Draw step-by-step flowcharts of specific applications both before and after the system is installed. This will help you to catch duplications or redundancies in procedure that existed in the past and that might occur again in new applications. Are there paper documents that need to be maintained? Are there ways to simplify your business operations before or during your conversion to voice response? Are jobs going to be changed?
The basic rule for designing voice applications is: keep prompts simple, short, and specific. Don’t provide an endless list of options to callers, which will surely confuse them. Offer callers just what they need in order to get to the information they want. If there are many options, and you want to make them all available, create a series of branched prompts that break the options into small groups of two or three options each.
Don’t make experienced users sit through an entire script. Allow them to override prompts by pressing keys at any time during the call.
After a caller has entered an order or request for information, always allow for a change of mind. Also, try to allow for errors throughout the transaction. If a caller doesn’t get it right in three or four tries, return to the main menu or play a prompt that tells the caller to call back and start again.
Applications should be clearly documented. Provide the name of the application, its purpose and benefits, how to access the system for the application, and the specific steps involved. Include the commands to be entered via the telephone keypad, the specific actions or results of each command, what to do in case something goes wrong, and the correct way to sign off the system.
Don’t have your voice segments recorded professionally right at the beginning: record them yourself to begin with, because they are sure to change before the voice response service is put into production, and you don’t want to waste professional recording fees. With voice segments, the rule is, “Start early, finish late!”
Build tracing and debugging into the voice response service from the start, and make it configurable. You can either turn on tracing and debugging statements by setting variables at the beginning of the state table, or you can include parameters in a command file that is read by a custom server.