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IVR Moves to the Next Level

By TMCnet Staff

Interactive voice response or IVR is a resourceful technology, but the introduction of smartphones now requires a more intuitive and user-friendly solution that lets users access the information they need with greater efficiency. Zappix, a visual IVR provider, has used smartphones to improve IVRs, and the company just announced it has enhanced the capability by supporting voice commands.

When TMC CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) spoke to Gal Steinberg, vice president of marketing at Zappix in 2014, he said, “Instead of the traditional IVR system where you have customers call in and you have to go through this maze of phone options, we provide a visual way of doing it through a smartphone, using the smartphone real estate in a much smarter way.”

The improvements the company has made now lets consumers use their voice for visual response to support the visual prompts in the menu.

Unlike traditional IVRs which use the telephone keypad to help the user navigate through the different menus, the Visual IVR makes use of a smartphone’s screen. When businesses deploy the visual platform, they will experience faster connection to the right Customer Service Representative (CSR (News - Alert)), lower the number of misdirected calls, simplify the customer experience and more importantly, increase the automation rates.

Because the apps for the Visual IVR let businesses change the menus right away, they can continue to increase the number of services that don’t require a live agent. The Zappix Visual IVR mobile platform can create, deploy or update a visual IVR solution on native iPhone (News - Alert), Android, tablets and mobile Web with a push of a button. This not only saves money, but the customer experience is dramatically improved because they don’t have to wait for an available agent to resolve their problems.

According to Zappix, the new voice capability delivers a much better Visual IVR experience, which includes selecting their preferred channel using speech. With visual and voice command, customers can go directly to the service they need without having to search in the long, slow and tedious menus of traditional IVR systems.

"We built our mobile platform to provide a real omni-channel customer experience with multiple communications paths and with our new capabilities,” said Zappix Chairman, Avner Schneur. “It is easier than ever for the customer to find the right path and the preferred method of communication to reach the right department within the service provider, in both live voice and non-voice live and self-service channels, resulting in increased satisfaction."

A recent Forrester (News - Alert) report revealed 55 percent of U.S. online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can find a quick answer to their query, and 77 percent said the most important thing companies can do is value their time. With customer service now the big differentiator for consumers, improvement in the touchpoint customers use can be the difference between them staying or going elsewhere.