What Is IVR & How It Improves the Customer Experience

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. IVRs team up with voice and computer technology to allow a customer service agent to respond quickly, accurately, and in an engaging way which has resulted in increased satisfaction rates.

Interactive voice response (IVR) is a voice-activated or keypad-activated phone menu that interacts with human callers. IVR is used in contact centers to offer customers with rapid information and to promote self-service activities, which eliminates the need for callers to speak with live agents and decreases the chance of frustration due to incorrect routing. An IVR system improves call flow metrics and reduces wait times by combining computer and telecommunication technologies.

Continue reading to discover more about IVR and how it may help both your customers’ calling experience and your company.

How Does IVR Work?

IVR (interactive voice response) systems are a kind of contact center technology that enables clients to do normal phone transactions without the assistance of a human operator.

Here’s a full description of how an IVR system works to help you better grasp what it is:

1. When a consumer dials a contact center, the IVR system will welcome them with an automated greeting before leading them through a sequence of guided choices (for example, “Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Billing”).
2. The IVR will enable self-service activities depending on the caller’s vocal response or telephone keypad responses.
3. If the IVR system is unable to answer the caller’s question, the call will be routed to the appropriate department or agent. The IVR will find the best competent operator to address the caller’s enquiry if the contact center platform provides a skills-based routing function.
4. If all agents are busy, the caller will be placed on hold until an agent is available to handle the call.

IVR systems assist a computer in processing a caller’s request in three ways. Touch-tone placement, guided discourse, and natural language are all examples of this.

• Dual-tone multi-frequency (DMTF) signaling is used in the most prevalent form of basic IVR system. This function instructs the caller to enter the desired information using the phone’s dial pad or touch-tone keypad.
• Directed dialogue: This IVR system employs speech recognition technology, in which the caller navigates the menu using vocal replies rather than a keypad.
• Natural language processing (NLP) software is embedded into modern contact center systems and is a sort of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) that understands requests in whole sentences rather than words or phrases.

What Are the Advantages of IVR for Customers?

Phones remain the most favored method for interacting with a company, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report. Most consumers want firms to make phone conversations as seamless and efficient as possible in this situation. The following are some of the reasons why incorporating an IVR system into your contact center business can benefit your customers:

• IVR systems work without the need of a human person and are accessible to help calls at any time of day, including outside of office hours. Even if the caller leaves a message, a job is completed, which increases the customer’s perception of your brand’s ability to provide prompt service.
• IVR systems enable callers to skip through unimportant alternatives, which saves time for the caller. IVR systems enable callers to select to be called back rather than waiting in a phone queue, therefore dropped calls are less frequent.
• Enhanced mobile experiences: As more consumers depend on their smartphones for almost everything, businesses must provide mobile-friendly customer support. Customers that have limited time to converse and prefer to deal on their phones can benefit from IVR systems. This creates a seamless consumer experience that is personalized to their specific requirements.
• Quicker problem resolution: Through a series of questions or alternatives, an IVR system may recognize the troubles that a caller is experiencing. Once it has identified the issue, it will connect the caller to the appropriate department so that it may be resolved as soon as possible.

What Are the Advantages of IVR for Businesses?

Small and mid-sized enterprises profit from IVR technology in a variety of ways. It has an impact on the whole contact center operations in addition to offering faster transactions. The following are some of the benefits of incorporating an IVR system into your contact center workflow:

• Customer service that is better: Callers are automatically routed to the most competent agent, which improves the customer experience. Customers like it when their calls are promptly answered or routed to the appropriate department. This results in higher customer satisfaction since they obtain the solution they need fast and without having to wait on hold or transfer.
• Improved corporate image and credibility: Because it is one of the first points of contact for your consumers, the IVR system is at the start of the customer engagement process. By aligning your IVR system with the customer journey, you can provide on-brand and tailored experiences to callers, resulting in a strong brand image and an engaging procedure.
• IVR systems offer intelligent and effective call routing, which helps link callers to the appropriate department, resulting in increased agent productivity. This cuts down on time spent gathering information from callers or moving calls from one department to another. Agents may use call routing to prioritize critical calls and enhance performance metrics including first-call resolution rates, average response time, and handling time.
• Large call volumes put agents under a lot of mental pressure, resulting in misrouted calls and excessive wait periods. An IVR system employs automated routing to eliminate mistakes in call routing.
• Reduced operating expenses: Every second your live agents spend on the phone costs your company money. IVR systems are low-cost phone system capabilities that allow agents to spend less time on the voice channel. Because it decreases call volumes and allows agents to concentrate on more sophisticated tasks, a visual IVR is less expensive to implement than a standard IVR.
• Provides a more complete customer view: Most businesses use interactive voice response (IVR) systems to learn more about their consumers. It provides the caller’s demographics, likes, and interests, which are then utilized to change brand message in post-campaign assessments.

Mistakes to Avoid in IVR Setup

The effect of a poorly implemented IVR system on corporate efficiency and customer happiness is significant. When creating an IVR system for your contact center, make the following mistakes:

• Menu choices that are too difficult or irrelevant: While you want your IVR system to have a lot of options, you don’t want to confuse or overwhelm your callers. The ideal way is to present just the information that is required and to organize the alternatives into easy-to-understand categories.
• Hold music that is loud and startling, or sales pitches that are repeated: Although long wait periods are unavoidable, you don’t want to add to their misery by playing loud music or bombarding them with pushy commercial pitches. Instead, play something that is easy on the ears or correlates with your company’s brand.
• Hard-to-reach live agents: While self-service alternatives might sometimes suffice to answer inquiries, they can sometimes be ineffective if the caller’s inquiry is too complicated. Allow clients to skip the IVR system by providing a direct line to a live representative.
• No callback option: Your IVR system may be unable to handle all calls and resolve all issues at times. However, once a live agent is available, it should provide the option of requesting a callback.

How IVR & Auto-attendants Differ

An auto-attendant is a pre-recorded message that is used to route calls and play music while a caller is on wait. An interactive voice response system (IVR) offers callers with information and records their responses in a database.

One of the most popular features of most corporate phone systems, such as RingCentral, is an automated attendant.

Conclusion

An IVR system that is effectively implemented has a tremendous influence on contact center operations and customer service. IVR systems are a cost-effective option for any company that wants to streamline the overall contact center experience, as well as major corporations with high call volumes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is IVR and how it works?

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, which is a voice menu system used to answer phone calls and provide information. It uses computer software-based call centers that use speech recognition technology that converts human language into digital signals.