IVR solutions, or Interactive Voice Response, are some of the best-known components of most contact centre and customer service landscapes. In a world where thousands of customers can call a business in one day, no company could handle all those conversations at once. Interactive Voice Response is a telephony feature that uses an automated attendant to route calls.
IVR technology ensures that companies of any size can always provide a customer with a response when they call – even if it’s just a message letting you know when the office hours are.
Over the years, IVR solutions have emerged as a standard part of any CX and customer service strategy. Yet as technology continues to evolve and customer expectations change, IVR offerings are becoming more advanced too.
Today, the correct software can automatically respond to customer queries using artificial intelligence to enable self-service solutions. Your IVR can even support business compliance by getting permission to record a call before anyone reaches an agent.
Here’s how IVR is driving business growth today.
How IVR Systems Empower Companies
An Interactive Voice Response allows companies to interact with customers and prospects through technology. In the past, this technology was much clunkier than it is today. We’ve all had experiences where we’ve called a company and tried to explain our needs to a machine, only to be met with frustrating, repetitive responses.
Now, IVR solutions are becoming an intelligent and more seamless part of the path to customer support, sales, and service.
Many of the most impressive IVR offerings today come with AI-driven solutions and natural language processing to understand and respond to customer queries faster.
Implemented correctly, IVR solutions can understand keywords spoken by a customer to determine where a call needs to be routed to ensure quicker responses. IVR can also help with things like gathering feedback from clients, offering promotions, and even taking simple payments.
IVR technology has found a purpose in inbound and outbound sales, accounting, loyalty programs, managing bookings, and so much more. Here are some of the ways IVR tech drives business growth.
- Amazing customer service
The right IVR technology helps to keep customers happy by ensuring you can solve problems as quickly as possible. An intelligent system can automatically understand what your customer is asking about using natural language processing to detect keywords. The IVR can then send each call to the right agent based on the skills and experience required to solve the issue.
IVR systems can also handle various actions without the support of a human agent. Many customers today can use automated systems to make simple payments, renew subscriptions, check information, or book appointments. That means your customers get results faster, and you save your agents crucial time on dealing with repetitive queries.
- Saving time and money
Customers appreciate speed and efficiency when it comes to solving problems or getting answers to questions. It’s this demand for speed that has pushed the rapid increase in self-service solutions around the world. An IVR system with custom menus can expedite calls from your customers, answering questions with responses taken from an FAQ script. The same system can even offer customers call-back options, so they don’t have to sit around listening to hold music. The system will simply call the customer back when an agent is available.
Aside from helping to save time, your IVR system can also reduce costs. For instance, one study found than an IVR solution is one of the cheapest ways to improve customer satisfaction. You can also potentially save money with an IVR by sorting through the conversations which don’t need agent attention. This means that you can use your professional resources more effectively.
- Improving customer journey visibility
IVR solutions can offer a range of benefits for companies. You can use an automated system to reach out to prospective clients and simplify lead generation. IVR solutions can even sort through your leads to determine which ones are qualified and ready to make a purchase.
IVR solutions also offer an opportunity to get a better insight into the customer journey. With IVR, you can automatically ask your customers important questions about their likes, dislikes, demographics, and more. The information you gain through your IVR solution can add to the information you have from your CRM system, and so on.
- Enhanced employee productivity
How much time do your agents waste passing customers onto a colleague when they can’t answer their questions, or searching for information that could assist a client? How often does this wasted time lead to increased frustration in both your team members and your customers?
An IVR solution streamlines the connection between the brand and the customer, ensuring that your clients don’t have to waste time repeating themselves. The result is an improved customer/brand relationship driven by a solution that suits your customer’s journey. You can dynamically create greetings based on what you learn about your audience, A/B test your messages, and design your own routing patterns that become more effective as you go.
- Opening the door for Business Scalability
The right IVR solution for you today might not be the same as the offering you need tomorrow. Fortunately, IVR technology is becoming increasingly innovative as CX solutions continue to evolve. Today’s systems are increasingly capable of handling customer calls and managing interactions without human interaction. This reduces the workload on the traditional team.
As your business grows, you can scale your IVR solution to suit your clients. This could mean implementing virtual assistants to respond to customer needs alongside your human agents. You could create new IVR systems and adjust your queuing strategies however you choose.
The IVR is Crucial to Customer Experience
IVR solutions are an essential part of a successful customer experience today. The right offering empowers and augments your agents in a busy service environment. An IVR solution can find information for an agent as soon as they hear a customer’s name. The same service could help them to find important information about a customer with screen pop data.
These screen pops are messages that appear on the agent’s screen as soon as they answer a call, pulling data from a CRM or IVR interaction so the employee has more context on the conversation.
IVRs also open the door for quicker, more effective routing practices, enhanced self-service, and improved data collection. Are you using your IVR to your advantage yet?
