The results of Avaya’s (News - Alert) just-released Contact Center Consumer Preference Study should prompt contact centers to step up training their staff on setting up and managing IVR systems.

The survey, commissioned by Avaya and conducted by callcentres.net revealed that half of U.S. consumers are likely to opt to use an automated voice response system when offered. Quick query resolution is the top rated reason why they will rate a customer experience as excellent.

IVR systems though must not be good enough: they have to be excellent. 90 percent of American consumers will tell friends, family or colleagues about a poor customer service experience and just 20 percent said they receive excellent customer service from call centers.

“Rapid advances in collaboration have changed the way customers want to interact with companies,” says Jorge Blanco, vice president of product marketing, Contact Center Solutions, Avaya. “In order to stay competitive, businesses must look at the entire context of a customer, including their history, mode of communications and current needs. It is through this insight—and the ability to use unified communications to rapidly reach the best resources available—that businesses can deliver the high levels of personalized customer experiences now expected during every interaction.”

To obtain those insights requires highly trained staff. The RCCSP Professional Education Alliance offers just that in its comprehensive IVR training course: IVR Design Training:Streamlining the Customer Experience. Offered over two days, it provides practical hands-on guidance for designing the best customer-focused IVR system for one’s business.

The RCCSP seminar updates one’s knowledge and skills with the latest information on DTMF touch-tone and speech recognition self-service IVR. Attendees will learn scientifically-proven techniques founded on human psychology that increases throughput and IVR containment while reducing errors. Other takeaways include learning how to structure easy-to-navigate menus, creating scripts that communicate one’s brand and make sense to customers, using natural language that helps and how to migrate to speech recognition. The lessons are delivered through examples, case studies and research studies and opportunities to evaluate their own IVR units’ quality.

With this training by the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance individuals will come away knowing how to:

*          Manage stakeholders and their expectations: including understanding current views on social media and IVR

*          Fully integrate speech recognition and DTMF touch-tone

*          Apply the business case to every facet of design and development

*          Divide IVR project into phases for quick turnaround, lower risk and faster-to-market success

*          Create and launch a customer-focused IVR that really works including managing test team and test procedures, create early demonstrations for testing and evaluation and benchmark one’s existing IVR systems against competitors

The classes will be held at on these dates at these venues:

*          July 11-12       Toronto, Ont., Canada (Park Hyatt)

*          Aug.1-2           Chicago, Ill. (Marriott Oakbrook)

*          Nov. 7-8          Dallas, Texas (The Adolphus)

*          Nov.15-16       Leeds, U.K. (Location to be announced)

*          Dec.5-6                        Las Vegas, Nev. (The Platinum Hotel)

“Business analysts, IVR specialists and software developers responsible for IVR and customer contact applications will benefit from this course,” says Nina Kawalek, CEO, RCCSP Professional Education Alliance. “Both technical and non-technical attendees are welcome.”