Missing Features

Your correspondent recently called into a conference line for a Salesforce webinar that was a great example of bad phone conference design. Here was the information:

Call: 1-800-495-3213
Meeting number:*7923220*

There were two main problems:

1. You have to enter a * before and after the meeting room number; and,
2. They announce an 800 number line to call for tech support when you first call this number.

The format for entering the phone number is non-standard, unhelpful and prone to error. As many callers undoubtedly did, your correspondent at first ignored the *s when entering the room number.

Did the telecom system catch the error and patch your correspondent right into the room? Nope. There really isn’t any reason why a user should have to enter in a * before the room number.

The second design flaw was having the system announce a tech support line 800 number. Why isn’t the tech support line linked from a number choice on the conference phone line

This teleconference company — for whatever reason– decided to design their system differently and badly.

Guidelines for teleconference line design:

• Allow a caller to immediately enter in the room number  after dialing the conference line, even if that means interrupting the welcome message;
• The room number should be followed by a #;
• The system should accept a room number after a short delay if no # key is entered;
• Alert the user on how to access tech support during the call (preferably by entering 0, the universal panic button on phone systems), and state that using this option won’t exit the user from the call;
• As usage is highly specialized by the user’s own phone, computer and desk setup, the best format for performing usability tests is field studies with users participating in real conference calls;
• Explain on entering the room if it’s a closed or open call;
• Generally catch common user errors (that design changes to the system can’t fix) and gracefully deal with them; and,
• In all decisions, help the user meet their ultimate goal: enter the conference room.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS