Broken wrist, Afternoon Tea and JEV

A few days ago I had one of those frustrating experiences where you think: there has to be a better way of doing this.

My daughter fractured her wrist and we had been at one of the local medical clinics to get it sorted. Everything was fine, except I forgot to ask for a certificate so she could be excused from her swimming lessons. No big deal, I thought. I’ll just call the clinic. I found the number on Google Maps, called and was greeted by the usual menu:

Press 1 if you need urgent medical assistance.

Press 2 to reschedule an appointment.

Press 3 to access policy information.

…

There were 5 options. None of them fitted and each had submenus leading me nowhere where I needed to go. There was no “press 0 for an operator” either. So after 4 completely new calls, and getting really good at skipping to the next menu, I finally pressed 1 because at that point I was close to needing urgent medical assistance.

Mentally preparing my apology to whoever I’d be connected to, another automated menu opened. “Which clinic would you like to be connected to?” I selected the right clinic and immediately got through to somebody. A few words exchanged with a real human and the requested certificate landed in my email not even 5 seconds after I ended the call.

The day of my “interesting” call experience was last Sunday. Last Saturday, I joined my first Afternoon Tea session with Jake. We talked about a few interesting things. One of them was JEV. I had watched Jake’s video about it as well. Suddenly the dots connected and I thought man, this is actually a really good JEV use case.

Instead of making me work out which menu option vaguely matches what I need, why not just let me say: “My daughter fractured her wrist. We were at this clinic and I forgot to get a certificate for her. I need one for her swimming lessons.”

Something like JEV could classify the request and decide where it needs to go. That alone would already be an improvement. Then I thought, hold on, this could get even more interesting if there was an ICM behind it. Imagine the system already has access to the relevant information about my daughter, the clinic visit, what happened and whatever other information is required for this particular process. JEV’s job might simply be to work out: What is this person trying to do? Which workflow does this belong to? Where should it go next?

Then the relevant ICM workflow could take over. It could retrieve the required information, prepare what is needed and identify anything that is still missing. And there was actually a good example of that when I finally spoke to the person. They asked me: “How long do you need the certificate for?” Fair question. I hadn’t told them. The system could ask me that as part of the workflow. A person can still review or approve what is being done at the appropriate point. And if the request is unclear, something is missing or there is a reason a person needs to get involved directly, then connect me to a person.

That is probably the bit I find most interesting. This isn’t really about replacing people with AI. It is about removing a fairly painful bit in front of the person. The person I eventually spoke to was helpful. The annoying part was getting there.

So, here is potential way to get rid of that annoying part:

Caller --> voice/text input --> JEV identifies the request --> correct ICM workflow --> retrieve relevant information --> ask for anything missing --> prepare the request --> human review / approval

And what's the correct ICM workflow? It's the workflow dealing with the situation at hand and that situation could be completely different depending on what somebody needs. An appointment, a certificate, medical records, a prescription, billing support, urgent care or simply a human operator.

I also came across some research afterwards which reflects pretty well what I experienced with traditional IVR systems. People get frustrated trying to navigate menu trees that don’t really understand why they are calling. https://www.egain.com/ivr-customer-experience-survey-report/

Interestingly, TypeSafe also uses customer service as one of their JEV workflow examples, including identifying what somebody wants, how urgent it is and whether the request should be handed off to a person.

I haven’t built any of this, and wasn’t planning to do so, so this is very much an idea. But it feels like a good example of how JEV and ICM could work together. JEV handles the routing decision. ICM provides the structure, context, information and workflow to actually get the job done.

Curious how others see this. What situations have you encountered? Let me know your thoughts.

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Broken wrist, Afternoon Tea and JEV