FonePal is a system developed to improve the experience of accessing call centers or helpdesks.
Known as "touchtone hell", voice menu navigation has long been recognized as a frustrating user experience due to the nature of voice presentation. In contrast, FonePal allows a user to scan and select from a visual menu at the user's own pace, typically much faster than waiting for the voice menus to be spoken. FonePal uses the Internet infrastructure, specifically Instant Messaging, to deliver a visual menu on a nearby computer screen simultaneously with the voice menu over the phone.
Our study shows that FonePal enables easier navigation of IVR phone tree, higher navigation speed, less routing error and greater satisfaction. FonePal can also seemlessly bridge the caller to searchable web knowledgebase, promoting relevant self-help, reducing call center operation cost.
Papers:
Yin, M, Zhai, S. Dial and see: tackling the voice menu navigation problem with cross-device user experience integration, Proc. UIST 2005: the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, Seattle, WA, USA , pp 187 - 190
Yin, M, Zhai, S. The benefits of augmenting telephone voice menu navigation with visual browsing and search Proc. CHI 2006: ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (to appear, pre-prints available upon request).