Optimizing Navigation Strength of IVR Systems through the use of a Nonchronological Pre-Programmed Prompt Approach

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the weaknesses of existing Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and suggest solution. The study involved a survey of various literature where content analysis was employed to analyse the surveyed literature. The study revealed that most of IVR systems have common navigation weaknesses that prevent the users from using them effectively. The most serious one is that they require users to follow a fixed pattern (i.e. “Press 1 for… Press 2 for… Press 3 for…”). When user Presses 1, for example, the same series of chronological pre-programmed prompts appears (“Press 1 for…, Press 2 for…, and so forth”) until the user gets what s/he wants. This pattern of chronological pre-programmed prompts is slow, tedious, and impersonal to users. In addition, in most of IVR systems there is no option for users to undo mistakes when they recognize that they have made a mistake. Moreover, the study observed that in some of systems there is absence of the “help” option that could provide help to users who are stuck in the cause of using the system. Basing on the observed weaknesses the study proposes an improved IVR system design based on a non-chronological pre-programmed prompts (NCPP) approach. Through the NCPP approach users will be able to select the intended contents just after interacting with the IVR system instead of following chronological patterns of the existing systems. For an effective IVR system design, the following three steps has to be observed; user identification, topic selection, and receiving intended contents. The study calls for implementation of the proposed approach through design and development of IVR mobile application based on the suggested approach, among other recommendations.