Customer service is a significant competitive and differentiation to a business. Even in today’s world a lot of customers prefer to contact customer services through phones rather than other means. No matter which industry it is all businesses need specific systems to handle the incoming and outgoing calls. VoIP Telephone System have made a significant difference by fulfilling these requirements. But deploying an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system can take your customer services to the next level.
Interactive Voice Response allows you to automatically route calls and other parts of the routine customer calling. IVR System is not only for large businesses but the small businesses can also benefit from this system. Regardless of the growing customer expectations for customer service experience, a lot of managers and organisations continue to oversee the potential of an IVR system.
How IVR system can help you?
A big trend in customer services is allowing customers to serve themselves. The established Industries such as airlines and banking have successfully adopted the self-service model in different areas. For example, you can check into your flight or check your account balance without having any human interaction. These kinds of tasks would not be possible without the IVR systems
Prioritise incoming calls
It is not unusual for a service department to have Employees with different experience levels and knowledge. A number of businesses even have dedicated teams to handle the high-value customer or to serve a specific big business client. You can use the IVR system to determine whether a caller requires a trained agent with their query, so it can route the call accordingly. You do not need to bounce calls around from one employee to another just because the first agent does not have the skills to help them. With IVR you will never lose a valuable customer because of the long waiting time or poor service level again.
Decrease the cost of calls per minute
Businesses often spend a lot of money and time in training their staff agents. Every minute that an agent spends on gathering the information for performing tasks which could be automated is a waste of your resources. You can use the IVR system to decrease the cost per minute of a service call in different ways. For example, the IVR system can handle all routine tasks reducing the number of calls which have to handle in the first place. Further, the IVR can gather information from the customer such as the type of problems they are facing or the product that is giving them issues and then can route the call to the correct agent. Finally, the IVR system can help in verifying the Identity of a customer by asking for an account number, pin, and other related data.
The best part about the IVR system is that all of this happens while the agents are resolving bigger service issues for other customers. An employee can enter a call just at a point where humanity is needed. It means you will need fewer employees to enhance your customer service levels.
Optimise the Identity verification
Privacy and data security are a huge concern for all businesses and customers today. It is the reason you have to jump through several hoops in order to identify yourself before the service representative can answer your question. The IVR system can automate this procedure so that your employee has all the information that they need even before they answer the call. The caller does not have to wait as they can just input the account number or other verifying data while being on-hold or waiting in the queue for the next free agent.
Create a good impression
While several customers might complain about the IVR system being impersonal but most of the people value the convenience. A lot of customers would be happy to complete their transaction without having to talk to an employee. Besides, having an IVR system projects a professional image to your customers. This system can be a valuable tool for small businesses, boutique stores or entrepreneurs in order to survive in a competitive market.
Obtain customer feedback
Majority of businesses use the IVR system for just incoming calls. But the system can streamline outbound calls as well. One such use is gathering customer feedback through polls or surveys. You can easily reach out to your current, past and future potential customers for feedback and criticism. With IVR you can also implement a script to poll customers regarding your products, services or marketing campaigns. In fact, a lot of customers might be honest with their responses when they don’t have to worry about hurting someone’s feelings.
Automatic mundane/routine tasks
The reality about Customer services is that a significant portion of incoming calls do not need a human agent to answer them. Then why do you need an employee to look up data such as outstanding bills or office hours for various locations? These tasks do not need the problem-solving skills and adaptability of a human agent. Therefore, an IVR System can serve your customers in finding out trivial information about your company such as the holiday hours, reward programs, sales or account statements. This allows you to free up your valuable human agents to deal with more complicated service issues.
The IVR system does not need a big investment and it offers a lot of benefits. So why you have to wait to deploy an IVR system for your business at a low cost? You need to start using an IVR system for your business and you will see a difference.
