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Customer case study

California Franchise Tax Board automates IVR testing with Klearcom ahead of its cloud move

Six lines, 17,908 test calls, and every change caught on the next test

How the California Franchise Tax Board put continuous automated testing on its live lines and set up scripted testing in development, ahead of a contact center platform migration.

Book a free consultation See the results
  • 27IVRs whose messaging is rewritten every year as state and federal tax law changes
  • 99.88%Test call pass rate across 17,908 automated test calls
  • 140Automated test calls every day across six service lines

The project at a glance

  1. Challenge

    The California Franchise Tax Board must update and test more than 27 IVRs as tax laws and programs change, while manual testing is slow and resource-intensive.

  2. Solution

    Klearcom mapped the IVR estate, introduced scripted functional testing in development, and continuously monitors six live service lines against an approved baseline.

  3. Results

    17,908 automated test calls achieved a 99.88% pass rate, with about 140 calls run daily and unexpected changes flagged on the next test.

  4. Business impact

    Faster, repeatable testing reduces reliance on scarce staff and lowers risk ahead of the agency’s migration from an on-premises contact center to the cloud.

Client snapshot

Organization
California Franchise Tax Board
Sector
State government, tax administration
Markets in scope
United States, tested from in-country numbers
Platform
Migrating from an on-premises contact center to cloud
Estate
More than 27 IVRs, six inbound service lines under continuous regression test
Environments
Development (pre-production) and production
Services in use
Discovery, functional and regression testing, live monitoring, load testing

Summary

The California Franchise Tax Board runs more than 27 IVRs and rewrites their messaging every year as tax law changes. Testing that work by hand took time the team didn't have, and much of the IVR can be validated only in development, before it goes live.

Klearcom now runs continuous regression tests on six live service lines against an approved baseline, and alerts the agency when a caller would hear something different. Over the current period, that’s 17,908 test calls at a 99.88% pass rate. In development, the agency’s menus are being mapped and scripted so changes can be tested before they go live, with the framework in place ahead of a move to a cloud contact center.

The challenge

California collects tax from an economy that would rank fourth largest in the world if it stood alone. Filing season concentrates that into a narrow window, and the phone lines are often the only route to the agency.

There are tax law changes every year and continual updates to programs and applications, so the messaging on IVRs changes with it. Across more than 27 IVRs, that is a substantial load, and the agency's IVR is more complex than most, with deep message trees that connect to legacy systems. Under the previous approach, changing a message deep in a tree meant rediscovering and remapping the whole branch before it could be tested again. That doubled the work and made thorough testing before a filing season hard to justify.

The agency runs multiple environments and much of its IVR can't be validated once it’s in production. Thorough testing is the best way to prove the IVR works before taxpayers reach it. Once a line is live, taxpayers rarely report a fault. They just look for any route to an agent.

“Once we move to production, we’re never going to have a taxpayer call us and say, ‘There was something wrong, I didn’t get through.’ They’re just going to try and get to an agent any way possible.”

Jeff DeLaCruzInformation Technology Supervisor, California Franchise Tax Board

A carrier can take lines out of service overnight without telling anyone, leaving callers with a recording saying the number is unavailable. Without independent monitoring outside business hours, the first signal is a complaint, and during filing season that’s already too late.

Continually testing manually is not an efficient use of resources. When it last updated its contact center platform, testing took well over 1,200 hours, and the coming move to a cloud platform will need more.

Why Klearcom

The agency spent around five years with a previous provider, the last two working closely with it to make the product fit. It never did, largely because the agency uses voice testing differently from most: as functional system testing in development, beyond discovery and monitoring.

The agency validated Klearcom against its own systems, and the platform fit most of its needs from the first meetings. The gaps closed quickly. Two were essential.

Previous provider Never a fit
  1. Year 1
  2. Year 2
  3. Year 3
  4. Year 4
  5. Year 5

The last two years spent working closely with it to make the product fit

Klearcom A fit from the first meetings
  1. Validated against the agency’s own systems
  2. Fit most of its needs from the first meetings
  3. The gaps closed quickly

A script and a record for every test

Every test needed a script and a record of what was tested, so the team could look back and see exactly what had been covered.

Message changes without remapping

A message change deep in a menu tree had to be testable without rediscovering and remapping the whole branch.

If FTB is going to pay money for this, sure, I want the monitoring and load testing. But the thing I was looking for most was: can this save me time in our functional testing? I am looking to save resources with these dollars, and that’s what Klearcom is providing FTB. I want to be able to do more for less.

Jeff DeLaCruzInformation Technology Supervisor, California Franchise Tax Board

What was achieved

Step 1 of 5

Map the estate

We started with discovery. Our platform calls each number, follows every path through the menu, and records each prompt, option and destination. That map becomes the approved baseline, and every later test compares against it. It's also what makes future message changes manageable: once the voice estate is mapped, updated messaging can be pushed through the test set rather than rebuilt branch by branch.

Step 2 of 5

Script tests in development

In development, the team is building scripted functional tests from those maps, and every test is kept as a record of what was covered. Testers generate the test scripts themselves, and the platform is simple enough that new team members get up to speed quickly. As more of the team uses it, the agency is finding testing faster than its manual process.

Step 3 of 5

Monitor the live lines

On the live side, around 140 automated test calls run each day across the six inbound service lines under continuous testing. Each call is scored three ways: did it connect, did the caller hear the right prompt, and how good was the audio. Over the current period that is 17,908 calls across 128 active test days.

  • Did it connect
  • Did the caller hear the right prompt
  • How good was the audio

Step 4 of 5

Flag what changes

After hours coverage matters most. Faults introduced by a carrier overnight, or by a change nobody logged, surface on the next test rather than at the next audit. Anything off baseline is flagged and emailed straight to the agency.

Step 5 of 5

Review together

We hold touchpoint calls every two weeks to walk through what has been flagged, confirm whether a change was intentional, update the baseline together, and report where testing stands against the agency's goals.

“We are finding it’s faster with Klearcom. We don’t have the staff to continually test, and as our team is coming on and using the Klearcom tool more and more, we’re finding it has capabilities that we can rely on to test and generate those scripts, and ease of use.”

Jeff DeLaCruzInformation Technology Supervisor, California Franchise Tax Board

Results

  • 17,908Live test calls across 128 active test days
  • 140Automated calls a day across six service lines
  • 99.88%Pass rate against the approved baseline
  • 2.37sAverage connect time, with 0.75% of calls over seven seconds

128 active test days

Each square is a day of automated test calls on the live lines.

Message changes
Tested against the mapped baseline without remapping the branch
Regression testing
Automated daily on live lines, with scripted tests being built in development for the migration

The failures are worth more than the pass rate

A change that small is easy to miss by ear, and the platform flagged it on the next test.

When the fault sits outside the IVR

Testing also shows when the fault sits outside the IVR. Calls connect in 2.37 seconds on average, with 0.75% taking longer than seven seconds. Those point to carrier or network latency outside the IVR, so the agency knows to take them up with its carrier.

“If we change a message way down, I didn't want to have to go through all that work of discovering things and having it mapped out, and then wipe out the whole leg and start over. One thing we found with Klearcom is that we can do that, and it was much easier.”

Jeff DeLaCruzInformation Technology Supervisor, California Franchise Tax Board

Where they are heading now

The agency is moving its contact center from on premise to a cloud platform, with the testing framework already in place. Its last platform update took well over 1,200 hours of manual testing, and this move will need more. With menus mapped and scripted tests being built in development, the agency will be able to rerun its regression set as often as the migration needs, which sharply reduces the risk of a menu option breaking unnoticed during the cut over.

1,200+ hoursManual testing on the last platform update
On demandRegression set rerun as often as the migration needs

Load testing

Load testing is being refined at the same time. The first load test pushed volume past what the system could handle, while real peaks on the IVR run lower because most callers wait in a virtual queue. Bot traffic has the potential to change that picture rapidly, and the agency now wants to know the volume at which it would be overwhelmed.

System limit First load test Real peaks (virtual queue) Bot traffic? Time Volume
Illustrative, not to scale

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About Klearcom

Klearcom is an independent enterprise voice testing and assurance platform, headquartered in Waterford, Ireland, testing in every country in the world, across 340+ carriers, for a multinational customer base.

Book a free consultation Why Klearcom
  • Every countryIn the world, tested
  • 340+Carriers
  • WaterfordHeadquarters, Ireland

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