If you have a call center, then you know that you need to maintain a tricky balance. On one end, you need to make sure your team is servicing maximum customers in the most efficient & cost-effective manner. On the other, you need to deliver exceptional customer service to satisfy existing customers & increase business revenue.
Today, most call centers are maintaining this tricky balance and achieving success by including an automated self-service technology called an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to their call centers. IVR provides call centers with a higher level of customer interactivity and data driven decision-making. It allows call centers to deploy a wide range of automated self-service and outbound dialing features ultimately freeing up agents to focus on more complex requests and customers requiring a higher touch.
According to Accenture, by adding a self-service technology, a typical utility could see $1-3 million in annual savings.
What is IVR?
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephony technology that interacts with the callers, gathers their information and understands their reason for the call, and routes them to the most appropriate agent within a team. It allows call centers to reduce costs, improve customer service and increase business efficiency in a simple manner.
IVR Features:
1. Customized Greetings, Messages & Prompts: Record a customized greeting that best represents your company and record a message that takes the caller one-step closer to having his questions answered.
2. Personalized Caller Information: Gather information about the caller and understand the potential needs that the customer is calling-in for.
3. Automated Customer Service & Problem Resolution: Help customers solve their own problems by obtaining specific information from them about the problem and then guiding them through the steps to resolve them – all without speaking to an actual agent.
4. Route Callers to the Appropriate Team or Department: With IVR’s speech ‘receptionist’, you can route callers to the proper team or department that helps them meet their needs.
5. Automated Outbound call: Deliver an automated outbound call triggered by an update in a customer record (e.g. transaction status change or upcoming appointments).
6. Intelligent Data-Driven Call Routing: During high call volumes, IVR can deliver prioritized calls to the most qualified agent based on the customer’s transaction status or account value.
7. Pre-built Templates: Customize IVR’s pre-built templates to deploy sophisticated call flows that meet your needs & ensure the right caller is directed to the right agent
IVR Benefits:
1. Lower Cost per Call: Reduce agent call volume, manpower costs and overall cost per call by automating all inbound & outbound transactions & processes.
2. Enhance Agent Performance & Business Efficiency: Connect the right skilled agents to the right calls by leveraging advanced data-driven routing & CRM integrations to enhance agent productivity & business efficiency.
3. Increase Customer Satisfaction & Customer Service Efficiency: Provide customers with an easy and efficient way to speak to the right department & quickly get the answer they need.
4. Increase First Contact Resolution: Increase first contact resolution by automatically directing callers to the agent that is most capable of meeting their needs
5. Increase Professionalism: Pre-record your greetings and messages using IVR to reflect professionalism, consistency and great first impression.
6. Save Time: Reduce the time spent in collecting caller’s information & transferring the call to the right agent.
7. 24×7 Customer Service: Use automated support and eliminate the need to have live agents 24×7.
Is Your Call Center IVR Ready?
According to Gartner, by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. If your call center is looking to adopt a self-service call center software technology such as IVR, then Evolve IP can help you in your research and decision-making.
At Evolve IP, we provide custom-built solutions that meet your business needs & requirements. Our cloud-based IVR will help you stay ahead of the competition, increase customer satisfaction, enhance business efficiency and reduce costs significantly.
