There is nothing more expensive than a missed opportunity. In the new experience economy every customer's journey must be personalized to customer needs, effortless to navigate and seamless through every touchpoint. Anytime the journey is interrupted by poor customer service, that experience may negatively influence future touchpoints, even when previous interactions have exceeded customer expectation. When superior customer experience is not carried across all touchpoints, a golden opportunity is missed and the cost to pay in customer relations may prove to be substantial.
Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRs) are often overlooked as a viable opportunity to empower customers to manage service issues themselves. Recent studies have shown that 86% of consumers prefer to use self-service touchpoints versus talking to a live contact center agent when handling routine matters (McKinsey Consulting, 2018). When customers effectively accomplish their self-service needs, customer loyalty improves and the contact center becomes more efficient with reduced call volume. Unfortunately for customers, IVRs have become the pariah of communication channels. While other self-service touchpoints such as web and mobile grab much of the attention, organizations ignore the IVR channel with little to no resources invested in delivering a great self-service experience. This results in long and confusing IVR menu options, making it very easy to understand why customers leave the channel frustrated, preferring instead to contact a live customer service agent to handle their needs.
Customers want options - the option to handle service matters for themselves or to contact you directly for support. Organizations should support that desire as well as provide effortless IVR journeys to meet customer expectations. With an average of 55 to 95 percent of incoming contact center calls routed through IVRs, the potential impact of improved customer satisfaction is significant (DMG Consulting, 2017). When poorly designed IVR menus are optimized to be simple to use and to provide menu flows that save time and reduce complexity, the decision to use the IVR is less about the customer's tolerance level and more about their preference to self-serve. Organizations further benefit by saving millions, as the average cost for a call to a live agent is as high as $6.50 per minute,while a typical IVR interaction costs $0.25 per minute (DMG Consulting, 2017).
Customer journey analytics is a powerful tool that can help you unlock the potential within your IVR, providing visibility into your customer's journey within the IVR and from the IVR to the contact center. With this deeper level of insight, you can quickly identify gaps and errors that deter self-service in the IVR. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), customer journey analytics removes the educated guesses by recommending optimal paths and predicting problematic journeys to improve the IVR customer experience, resulting in reduced operational costs and offering a quick payback period on your investment.
With the rise of customer experience as a key brand differentiator, organizations must deliver a superior customer experience across all channels to maintain their competitive advantage. A small investment in the IVR channel allows organizations to deliver a seamless, holistic customer experience that enhances customer satisfaction and impacts the bottom line.
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