The business world is moving towards self-service more and more every day and interactive
voice response (IVR) is an essential tool for it. IVR uses technologies such as touch-tone or
speech recognition to identify and route callers to the most skilled agents. That way, IVR
delivers greater efficiency on both sides. As it’s been on the market for a while now, it has
demonstrated numerous benefits which made it a vital tool for contact center customer
experience. We bring you five key benefits of the IVR and explain why you should consider
to implement it in your business.
Advanced features provide richer experiences
IVR systems have numerous rich features that improve the self-service experience. Probably
one of the most effective features is allowing customers to tap their way through visual
menus and reach agency very quickly. IVR technology provides customers with a possibility
to get into an agent queue and it supports text-to-speech in multiple languages on inbound
and outbound sides. With IVR, customers can truly have a much more fulfilled experience as
they enjoy more features that are suited to fit their needs.
Time-saving
There is probably nothing more frustrating than wasting your time listening to long menu
options. Luckily, with IVR, customers can easily skip the options they don’t need and,
therefore, save time. Consequently, the number of dropped calls also decreases as
customers can choose to be called back when their wait time is longer than they’ve
expected. Not to mention that the feature of being routed to an agent with adequate skills
helps customers get the information they need without having to go from one agent to
another.
Improving mobile customer experience
In today’s world, we all own a smartphone. Its usage is constantly growing as people prefer
mobile experience over desktop when searching the Internet or even doing business. As a
result of that, many companies now offer mobile-optimized customer service to increase the
satisfaction of their customers. For those customers who are always on the go, IVR is an
ideal technology as it allows them to reach out for support even when in-store. That’s why
IVR plays a key part in improving sales results. After all, customers will more likely purchase
if their questions are answered efficiently.
Enhancing agent’s performance
As IVR technology is truly efficient, it enhances the service experience for both customer’s
and agent’s sides. Each time a customer is routed to the most skilled agent for his inquiry,
the level of productivity increases. That helps agents to resolve cases more quickly and
provide their customers with the assistance they need at the moment. Also, when agents are
matched to the roles that fit their skills, they will be more confident and their results will be
much better than before.
Reducing costs
Of course, we can’t talk about the benefits of IVR technology without mentioning one of the
most important ones – cost effectiveness. Call centers will reduce cost when they implement
this system as customers will make fewer calls, so the agents will not have to spend so
much time on the expensive voice channel. Also, when compared to traditional IVR, visual
IVR cost less to deploy which provides customers automatically with the information they
need and eliminates the need for additional agent training.
Great customer experience happens when both sides have the tool that enables them to do
and give their best. At Telesero, we know how beneficial is an IVR system for companies so
we offer it as part of our services as well.