Interactive Voice Responses (IVR) services are powerful tools that businesses can leverage to ensure the best customer care services. IVR services are telephony software that customer service centers use to help routing calls, collect customer information, and enable self-service. A menu is provided to the customers at the beginning of the service calls, where the customers’ choices help the call centers to route the calls to the qualified live agent or the agent team. For instance: if the customer chooses 1 for claims, the routing would be initiated by the IVR to a live agent who would assist the caller with claim-related queries. The IVR service can be structured in a menu according to the way that makes the most sense to the organizations, whether based on products, departments, or issue type.
Six benefits IVR can provide for Customers and Businesses:
- Call Center Efficiency is Increased: With IVR services in place, the calls of the customers are quickly routed to the expert agents, which leads to faster resolutions of queries. It is because the system menu structure allows the callers to select the option that places them in the best queue available. A thoughtfully-structured menu in the IVR can increase the rate of customer self-service resolution, which results in reducing the number of agents needed to answer each call. This helps in freeing up the agents to take other more critical calls. In the world of customer service centers, the main goal of every business is to satisfy every customer as quickly as possible. Faster solutions and fewer transfers can help customer satisfaction and help gain efficiencies for businesses.
- Set Inbound Call Priority: A multi-channel solution gathers more customer history data, this allows IVR service to prioritize important calls at the front queue. Certain options can be hidden by IVR and make them available when other VIPs or executive calls in. By entering a specific code, the important calls can be moved in the queue for faster services. A level of service is also allowed by IVR systems, on the customer menu options. For instance, if the same team answers the general customer queries, and also technical support, then a higher level of service can be set for technical support options. This helps prioritize more technical calls than general calls.
- Mediate Customer Service Surveys: Want to know, if customers have reached the level of satisfaction?. An IVR system can add the option of a customer service survey at the end of each call to get their feedback. A system that has survey capabilities would automatically ask the customer to stay online after their call. The IVR service can help to decide which questions to ask the customers and then measure their responses accordingly. This data can be stored in the phone system that informs the business strategy and helps in ameliorating the customer service capabilities.
- Messaging Updates: An IVR system easily allows businesses to update customer messaging. If advance notice of the software update or a sudden outage of service is experienced, messaging can be quickly switched up to alert customers about the issue. In that way, if customers are calling to ask why the service is temporarily not working and hear the answer in the messaging, then the agents are free enough in handling other incoming calls. If there is a high volume of calls, the customers can be updated through messaging.
- Customers appreciate the information about the wait time or seek out an alternative method of communication instead.
- Availability of Callback Request: The most up-to-date IVR platform offers customers the options for callback requests. The request helps the customers in maintaining their position in the queue without staying in the line. Especially during high calls, the callback request demonstrates to the customers that you are respectful of their time. It improves the satisfaction of the customer to a great level.
There are several IVR service providers in India, out of which Knowlarity provides the best IVR services at a lower cost. It offers multi-lingual support, 24*7 customer services, call routing, call recording, concurrent calls, and a customizable menu. Thus, the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems help ameliorate the customer support channels for businesses of every size and need.