1.  Intelligent call routing

By integrating your IVR system with a unified CRM, you have the power to intelligently route calls based on the caller’s phone number:

• Users can automatically be directed to the last agent, high-value customers can be placed first in the queue, and specific language needs can be met by the right agents—among many other benefits.
• By optimizing intelligent routing to fit your customer’s journey, you can reduce abandon rates, decrease hold times, and offer tailored IVR callback options when volume is especially high.

2.  Support for busy times and disaster recovery

IVR systems gives companies options for callers to self-serve and leave voice messages:

• Even during times of high demand, seasonal peak activity, or emergencies, an IVR supports the contact center by reducing pressure on your agents.
• Automating simple tasks is easy, such as common questions dealing with account info, order status updates, or payment due dates.
• A modern IVR system can ensure messages and menu options can be quickly and easily modified during peak times.

3.  Improving the customer journey 

Without the right planning, IVR systems might frustrate callers with complex and clunky designs:

• Today, IVRs are aligning with the customer journey, using clear messages that accurately reflect the company’s brand and deliver a powerful self-service tool for users.
• If a caller needs to talk with an agent, information collected in the IVR is seamlessly transferred and provided to the most appropriate agent to handle the interaction—improving productivity and reducing frustration for everyone.
• A well-built IVR with advanced speech recognition capabilities enables callers to self-serve outside of typical business hours 365 days a year.
• Using an IVR, you can create rules to route certain callers for faster service or specific needs.
• Priorities can be set based on customer status, amount of debt, or estimated vulnerability based on previous interactions.

Regular testing and tuning of the IVR is key to ensuring you continue to improve the customer journey, versus bottlenecking customers with a complicated or inefficient flow.

4.  Measuring customer satisfaction

IVR surveys after each customer interaction help to provide accurate Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores that can be valuable to your business:

• These scores can help give you a sense of how individual agents are performing, according to customers.
• This is useful feedback when it comes to training or rewards programs.
• By making your on-hold experience more robust, you can improve customer satisfaction, plus reduce dropped calls and hang-ups at the same time.

5.  Improving the agent experience

Routine calls and common questions are prime candidates for IVR routing:

• When callers are able to self-service by means of an IVR, you can free up your agents to handle more complex customer interactions across all your channels.
• Not only does this reduce the amount of repetitive “busy work” for your agents, it also can improve agent efficiency.
• By employing Text to Speech (TTS) in your outbound calls, an IVR enables you to offer welcome messages to customers, inform them about special offers, send reminders, or sometimes handle entire requests with no agent intervention.
• Other technology, like Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), helps the IVR comprehend the nature of a call with speed and accuracy.
• The IVR can either help to fulfill the request via customer self-service, or direct the call to a live agent and automatically provide all relevant customer information, eliminating the need for manual lookups.

An effective IVR system should allow decision-makers and managers to modify call flows and menus with ease, using customer feedback as a guide, or in case of an evolution in your strategic process. The right solution should give you the power to develop complex IVR flows, launch menus, create recordings, and more all through an easy-to-use, point-and-click interface.

1.  Gather, analyze, and apply insights from data

Data that measures key metrics of your agent and customer experience is crucial for making improvements to your self-service process. But raw numbers alone aren’t enough—your IVR solution, and technology partner, should make it easy to glean insights from that data and then implement those learnings to fine-tune your system.

2.  Learn from your agents at every step

Who are your best agents? They’re the ones who consistently deliver the best service to your customers, fulfilling requests with care, speed, and a personal touch. By observing these agents work, you can identify best practices and opportunities—specific to your business—that can help create an even better experience for your customers (and your agents). 

3.  Bring your best agents into the system design process

Are your best agents actively serving on project teams tasked with designing your self-service processes and flows? If not, you could be missing out on valuable insights from the people who are most familiar with the day-to-day needs and requests of your customers. They can also help monitor systems, test them, and give you insights into the behaviors of your customers.

4.  Empower your agents to inform customers about self-service options

Make sure you take the time to train your agents on the types of self-service options available to your customers, the advantages of those alternatives, plus how and when best to make use of them. This way, your agents will be equipped to point customers in a helpful direction.

5.  Unify your IVR with your CRM

By integrating the systems in your contact center, specifically connecting your IVR with your CRM, you can capture customer information during self-service and then deliver it to your agents to help provide a personalized touch to each interaction.

6.  Listen to customer feedback

It’s important to hear customer comments when things go right. But it’s even more crucial to hear their input when interactions aren’t smooth or go off the rails entirely. By learning from the good and the bad, you’ll know what to continue doing in the future—and what you need to change or overhaul going forward.

7.  Make it easy for your customers to reach your agents

Exceptional self-service isn’t just about helping your customers fulfill requests on their own. You must also ensure your customers can reach a live agent when they want or need one. To make this process quick and easy, offer the following capabilities:

• Ability for your customers to connect with an agent in your top-level IVR menu
• A clear path to exiting your IVR, mobile app, or chat window
• Phone numbers, email addresses, and contact links prominently displayed on your website and app
• Multiple channels to give customers more options and flexibility (voice, email, SMS, webchat, social media, etc.)
• Web forms that streamline the process for asking questions, sharing comments, and gathering other customer input
• Contact numbers and self-service alternatives posted in relevant online communities, such as social networks and forums

Be on the lookout for continuous improvement opportunities

As we mentioned before, gathering raw data about your self-service processes isn’t enough. You always need to be thinking about how best to apply the insights from those numbers. Ask yourself: why do your customers reach out to your business? Which types of interactions do you want to increase and which do you want to reduce?

By itself, the benefits of Speech Recognition seem limited these days. Yes, the technology enables customers to interact with your systems via voice—but it’s designed to recognize only a limited set of inputs of phrases.

In combination with NLP, however, you can offer more freedom and flexibility to your customers when they interact with your business:

• Together, Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing (NLP) let customers communicate with your systems in their own words.
• Users aren’t restricted to a specific, pre-defined set of inputs or phrases.
• Not only can your systems recognize the user’s unique speech, it will also respond in a way that automatically learns over time.

NLP is the core technology behind today’s AI-enabled solutions, including conversational IVR, chatbots, and AI Virtual Agents:

• It creates a more natural dialogue between your customers and your systems
• Customers have the ability to interact freely when self-servicing
• Machine learning enables your system to get smarter the more it’s used

Implementing these two technologies together means your customers can quickly and easily reach the right self-service option—using their own words, instead of being forced to interact via touch-tone.