Application errors

Use the following guidelines when designing your applications to process errors.

When caller errors occur

Caller errors occur when callers enter information that the application considers incorrect, or when callers enter nothing at all. When callers make errors, provide them with an informative error message. Tell them what went wrong and how to correct it. To assure that callers hear error messages, do not allow barge-in or dial through during at least the first part of error messages.

Allow callers no more than two or three tries to enter information. After the first error (and second, if allowing three), the application should speak out a prompt that contains more information, so that callers can get a better idea of what is required. After the last try, tell callers to hold for an attendant, then transfer the call.

When speech recognition errors occur

Speech recognition errors occur when the recognizer cannot match the caller's speech to a phrase it is prepared to recognize.

Use the following guidelines for processing speech recognition errors:

• Choose one concise phrase and use it consistently within a single application. For example:

• When using a word list of five or fewer items, reprompt with a "sorry" phrase, then give a list of the valid options. For example:

  "Sorry. Please say checking, savings, interest rates, loan rates, or operator, now."

• When using a large word list, include some helpful information in the reprompt. For example:

  "Department, please."
  < Excuse me? >
  "Sorry. Please say the name of the department you want, or hold to speak with an attendant."

Effective wording of error messages

To speak out an informative error message using IVR Designer, use the Initial Prompt field on the Response tab within a Prompt and Collect node. Set this field to False for Try Again and True for Reprompt. Be sure to specify the informative error message in the associated Voice Response field. Specify an appropriate error message for each type of error that can occur (Initial Timeout, Too Few Digits, or Not on List), as shown in the following examples for touchtone input:

• If the first prompt is:

  "What time would you like your wake-up call?"
  and the caller does nothing (Initial Timeout error)

  A more informative prompt could be:

  "Please enter the time you would like your wake-up call. Use the telephone keypad to enter two digits for the hour and two digits for the minutes."

• If the first prompt is:

  "Enter the date of the lottery."
  and the caller presses some touch tones, but not enough (Too Few Digits error)

  A more informative prompt could be:

  "Please enter the date of the lottery for which you want to hear winning numbers. Use the telephone keypad to enter two digits for the month, and two digits for the day. If a month or day has only one digit, use a zero before the digit."

Avoid using negative or accusing words when indicating an error. Words such as "invalid," "bad," "wrong," or "incorrect" can make callers feel threatened. "Sorry" is a brief way to say that the input was not recognized or was incorrect, and "Please repeat" or "Please enter again" are brief ways to ask callers to act again.

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