Using Your IVR System to Improve Customer Self-service
July 03, 2012
By Juliana Kenny, TMCnet Managing Editor
There are pros and cons to automation, especially when that automation has a hand in the way your customers interact with your brand. Self-service portals can save your business time and money, but they can also make-or-break the customer experience. Interactive voice response (IVR) systems, the technology behind the self-service portals, should be flexible enough, reliable enough, and come with a support team able to maintain your business’ customer-facing operations.
A writer from the CMS Wire recently suggested that generational developments also play a role in the necessity of IVR systems and self-service implementations now. “For younger people, particularly those who have grown up not knowing a world before the Internet, the absence of an online system or a mobile app, or even a quick and effective IVR system, will be perceived fairly negatively,” Sloan wrote.
So what are the best ways to ensure your IVR system is doing what it needs to do to attend the needs of your customers? One way is to explore what kind of system is going to serve you best. Interact, Inc. has been helping businesses create fully functioning IVR systems and design call flows for years, and offers customizable features within these implementations.
The challenge arises when contemplating how to make legacy systems accommodate self-service since some of them are not designed to easily take on such software. IVR applications can help with this issue. Interact provides the ability to build your own application, or its team can build it for you. With a Service Creation Environment, users can design their custom IVR applications or enlist the aid of the Interact support team.
The IVR system should aid, not impede, your CRM strategy. As we learned a couple of weeks ago, “Most people can’t retain in memory more than 30 seconds of information at a time, so an IVR with more than thirty seconds of options or information is just going to confuse customers.” Take in to account what your business needs, what your customers want, and get a little guidance from experts, such as Interact, to create the best possible customer experience.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.
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Edited by Brooke Neuman