Dental Provider IVR Sample

This dental insurance customer had some specific requirements around the playbacks at this point in their provider IVR. They asked for particular fields to be played back, and wanted it as quick and painless as possible.

The dynamic playback was heavily dependent on the nature of the API returns and the table values.

This simple solution was exactly what the customer expected, a no-frills playback of dental history.

Large Project Case Study

The project

A large power utility with 80% market share in its state has an extensive automated phone system. The documentation of this system is just over 2000 pages long, including design, development, and grammar requirements.

I was the lead designer for this project for more than 2 years. My charter was to unify the tone and persona across this immense project, all while building usable and elegant conversational functionality.

The team

The size of my team varied between 1 and 6 designers. The modular nature of the project provided an ideal environment for new designers and interns to learn the processes involved, with the opportunity to build functionality from start to finish.

Additionally, the customer wanted to use their own internal designers, so I supervised their training and design work as well.

The result

In addition to completing a best-in-class automated system, the customer was thrilled with the quality of work and organization of our team. The designers under me went on to lead successful projects of their own. They brought innovative ideas to the design practice, and their techniques were integrated into the process.

Life Insurance Case Study

The Problem

The customer, a large, well-known life insurance company, needed a complete overhaul of their antique automated phone system. They didn’t know where to begin.

Where to begin

I met with the stakeholders and we made a list of all the functionality they wanted, all their business rules around those functions, as well as details of the back-end values that were available for use. The customer had already a persona defined, as well as user archetypes. They also had a voice talent already contracted.

Whiteboard the design structure

Using the inherent structure of their business, we worked out a plan for the high level flow that would fit with the persona. Authentication determines the policy type, and each policy type has a unique subset of functionality. The idea was to build reusable functions that would be called when chosen from a given menu. After discussion and refinement, the business agreed on the approach.

high level flow chart of IVR functionality

Sample conversations

I put together sample conversations so the customer could get a feel for the overall experience. This allows the customer to see how their business rules would be implemented. This also gave us a chance to verify that the back-end variables were mapping to the right fields.

Complete the specification

Now that the customer liked the samples, the detailed specification could be written. While writing, I worked closely with the development team to ensure back-end accuracy, and with the QA team to ensure that all the use cases would be covered. The resulting documentation, including all the error handling and global behavior, was handed off to the development team.

Deployment

Because of the close communication between design and development, the project deployed without any major defects. The SIT and UAT passed without any problems. The first round of metrics showed that the containment rate doubled, reducing their call center expenses by several million dollars in the first year alone.