Balancing personalized experiences and privacy concerns - how one technology gets it done

Your customers want it all.

Whether it's tracking down their latest tax refund or a late shipment, making sure the bills are paid on time, booking a flight, or simply checking their available bank balance - they want the technology they use to know them just as well and intimately as a good friend would during the transaction. But unlike that good friend, when the job is done, they want them to act like they never knew them at all. Until the next time they need them of course.

We want our technology to be to be personalized, as though we were interacting with someone who knows us really well and won't ask silly, redundant, and repetitive questions. We want our tech to have context awareness every time we use it - not siloed dialogues executing step-by-step in an information vacuum. We want natural language dialogues that account for common sense and don't end up in some dead end corner of a state machine.

Your good friends know you because, besides being humans themselves, you have shared with them in the past. Over time, they get to know who you are, your likes and dislikes and even how you are likely to respond under a given set of circumstances. There's an implicit trust that exists in that person to person relationship, one that takes time to ferment.

Emulating this very human characteristic often poses a problem when we use the technology we use on a daily basis. We are no longer talking about one human being to another in the relationship. The human is engaging with one form or another of technology - be it mobile, web, phone, speech or even a vehicle. The human side of this relationship expects to be treated personally and with a minimum of effort on their part. The technology side of the relationship really struggles to deliver on that expectation, especially given today's concerns about storing the personal data that makes those same interactions, well, personal.

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other social media and online services already know this and are increasingly aware of the impact legitimate privacy concerns are having on their web-based business models. It's the same when it comes to speech technologies like voice enabled virtual assistants and IVR systems.

So, how do personalization and privacy concerns relate to phone based customer service and, in particular, self-service voice applications ("Press or say 1", "Tell me what you'd like to do today" etc.)?

As on the web, phone callers want you to treat them the same way a close friend would. They want you to understand them and converse with them in a way that is comfortable and works for them. There is also an implied trust that you'd never share anything personal or sensitive to them.

They want you to not only know their particular style of communication, with all of its nuances, conversational pauses, speech tempo and so forth, but they want you to know ahead of time when they are becoming frustrated or bored with the pace of the dialogue. And when they are done with the call and their problem is solved, they want you to act like you don’t know them from a hole in the wall.

Until they call again, that is.

Good communicators know...

Have you ever noticed how much time and effort good communicators put into just?listening?to their conversation partners?

Good communicators will always have their ears open way more often than their mouths. They carefully choose the timing, delivery and content of their message based on how they understand their audience communicates and digests information internally.

You may be better at this than you think you are.

For example, when speaking in person or via telephone to another person, have you ever noticed how you tend to speak more slowly when your listener seems confused? Do you naturally enunciate more and elaborate if they continue to struggle? Would you allow your listener more time to respond instead of jumping to the next point if this is the case? Or would you speak a little faster if you sensed your listener was getting bored? Maybe omit some inconsequential details further down the road in the conversation in order to help keep them engaged?

As humans, we do these things naturally, instinctively and often even unknowingly. They are part of the verbal and aural skill set we have evolved over the millennia and come from a strong desire to communicate effectively with our fellow humans...

This quality resonates with us humans and conversely, a machine that attempts to have a dialogue with us, no matter how good the ASR, NLP, Grammar Optimization, best practices in VUI Design or other design aspects, will always leave something significant on the table if it omits this most natural of human qualities.

We are only human

It is only natural then, that any system seeking to effectively communicate with your valuable customers adopt these same characteristics in order to be successful. Failing to do so ignores one of the fundamental tenets of human communication. It’s a primary reason many callers have developed such a strong dislike for voice self-service in general. And there's justification for that – why is it that the IVR or Voice Assistant won’t even listen, really listen to them – just like humans do? Here's an example of how this form of listening and tuning in works in a technology we developed...

Having your voice assistants and IVR system listen to how your callers behave during the call and adjusting the responses of the system accordingly promotes improved communication without the need to keep caller profiles or other personal information. This kind of caller anonymous personalization translates directly into direct cost savings (the call is more efficient and productive and is more likely to remain in the self-service channel) and improved customer service (the call is more user-friendly, pleasant, and likely to achieve a goal for your customer).

Whatever technologies and platforms you use today and in the future, this is what ultimately matters to your valuable customers.

Daniel O'Sullivan is the CEO and Founder of?Gyst Technologies.