Six Design Tips to Improve IVR and Save Time and Money.
Ask people in the street about interactive voice response (IVR) systems and you are likely to get very different viewpoints. Loved by many as a quick way to make a payment, check a balance or top up credit on a mobile ‘phone, many customers are happy to use a self-service IVR solution.
However, other people just want to speak to someone directly and do not want to spend several minutes listening to a recorded message and selecting different options. Worst of all is when the caller ends up in a loop back where they started and then they have to repeat everything to a live contact centre agent.
There is no denying whether you love or loathe them, IVR solutions implemented well can help to deal with high call volumes, reduce cost and improve customer service. Business hours can be extended to provide a round-the-clock response, every day of the year, and seasonal spikes can be managed to take payments which would normally require temporary staff or costly overtime.
The secret to IVR is making it available to those customers who want to use it, while not frustrating those who would prefer to talk to a contact centre agent. To help achieve this careful balance here are six design tips to ensure this response channel works for the contact centre and its customers:
1. Integrate IVR with business processes
The ideal solution is to provide an integrated IVR Payments system that enables customers to self-serve for the majority of simple enquiries, such as checking balances, making payments or managing accounts. Once these are in place it frees-up valuable agent time to deal with urgent or more complex enquiries.
2. Keep call options simple
3. Provide customers with confidence in the system
4. Speak the same language
5. Meeting customer needs
6. Keep checking
With IVR systems there are definite benefits to be had – for your business and your customers. Getting the design right and using the most appropriate technology, at the least possible costs, can save both time and money. Research in “The Inner Circle Guide to Self-Service” from ContactBabel published last year revealed that the average cost of a telephony IVR self-service session is 65p, compared to £3.87 for a live agent call, £3.70 for an agent-handled email and £3.00 for a web chat session. This means that IVR costs 6 times less than a phone call. With figures like this even people in the street would agree it is worth getting it right.
