Virtual Office Resource

Employing a live person to answer your phones is a nice touch, but does it help drive revenue or simply add more cost to your bottom line? If your call volume exceeds that of the average business environment, it’s likely that one person wouldn’t be able to keep pace and callers would experience the opposite of what you intended.

For this reason alone, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is a good idea. It not only ensures all calls are answered promptly, it allows customers to leverage the self-service channels they want and keeps your customer service reps available for those who actually want to talk to a live person. For the virtual office, it just makes sense that customers will start with a sophisticated auto attendant. 

If the IVR is the direction you want to go, the next step is to figure out how you want it to operate. This means you have to develop a menu, one that will serve callers well and ensure they get to their intended destination. Menus that leaves customers frustrated and confused could easily also lead them to call the competition. To avoid this scenario, let’s borrow from a recent Phone (News - Alert).com blog on how to set up an effective IVR menu in your virtual office.

First, create a greeting for the menu that informs callers that various number prompts will enable them to reach specific employees or departments. Then, create a menu system and configure call forwarding rules according to menu number prompts. Your virtual office phone number can then be forwarded to your menu. It’s the perfect set up whether you always work from home or occasionally like to take advantage of the telecommuting policy at work.

Second, pay attention to the way in which you develop your menu. This is an area where too much information is not a good thing. Focus on the most common reasons customers call you. Do they need to reach a specific person? Offer a dial by name option. Do they need to talk to customer service? Make this an early option in the menu. Do they want to review their balance? This should be an early option as well. If you get the occasional caller who wants to ask about how the market will look in the next year and you’re not a broker, this would be a “connect to customer service” kind of call.

Finally, remember to keep the menu simple, short and easy to use. If you have menus built into menus built into menus, you might want to reevaluate what you allow callers to do when on the phone. Otherwise, give them about four options in addition to customer service (or less) and you’ll be good to go.