Tangent Telecom's Golden Rules of Dialogue Engineering

• Keep it Simple - If a caller can confuse it, the laws of statistics state that some of them will
• Keep the number of options as low as possible, without having too many layers of menu
• Effect then Action (to achieve this result, press that key), not Action then Effect
• No jargon
• If you want a different response, ask a different question (if you simply repeat the question, expect the same response)
• When in trouble, drop to an agent - but don't offer this every five seconds
• Ask yourself why callers do stupid things and what stupid things your callers might do. Cater for these
• There is no such thing as user error - just bad design that didn't elicit the correct response - as the Dialogue Engineer it is YOUR FAULT not the caller's
• Be consistent
• Cater for every error - even the ones which can never happen
• Think about the target audience. Think about the expert and the naive user. Put yourself in their position
• Use the caller language, not yours
• Iterate through the dialogue. Review and rework. Dialogue engineering is cyclic - there is always scope for improvement
• No dead ends - your callers must always be able to go back (and be told how to do it when appropriate)
• Callers are smarter than you think, but have very poor memory - only offer things you want them to have and things that will be useful now
• Try it on someone else who doesn't know it like you do