There's no argument to defend the reality that complex IVR menus can frustrate callers. Where IVR menus are structured to organize customer requests and put customer service back in the hands of the customers, the complex hierarchy of menus can make someone regret using your company. In the initial days of IVR, there was an accepted assumption that the faster a caller is able to speak with a live agent, the higher their satisfaction level with the overall experience will be. However, recent surveys and studies have shown that regardless of whether the customer is serviced by a live agent, a speech recognition engine based virtual agent, or through self service; what is important is that actual delivery of the service request is fast and efficient. Parameters such as first call resolution and low call abandonment rates have become the measures of call center performance instead of parameters such as average length of calls. The rest of this blog post is dedicated to structuring your IVR tree considering all 3 metrics in harmony to provide the highest level of customer service while still deeming call center performance equally as important.
Without further adieu, I present the 10 things to remember while configuring your call centers IVR menu.
1. Business Objectives: The first step in designing your IVR menu is to have a clear understanding of the business objectives of the organization. If you are a third party call center, you would need to keep in mind the business objectives of your call center as well as the organization that you are serving. Thus, a complex multi-layered IVR menu where it is extremely difficult to reach a live agent may form one end of the spectrum (i.e. where cost optimization is the only objective) whereas an IVR menu which allows you to reach a live agent at any point during the call may form the other end of the spectrum with customer satisfaction as the primary objective.
2. Self Service: IVR menus should be designed in such a way that it is easy for the caller to obtain information and perform routine tasks. For example, a credit card’s call center where the maximum number of calls are for balance enquiry can design the menu such that the balance due is automatically announced as soon as the customer authenticates himself with the card number and expiration date.
3. Analyze Before: Before configuring an IVR menu, it is essential to analyze the profile of customer requests and the call arrival rates in the call center. The highest volume of inquiries that lend them self to possible self service requests should be placed right upfront in the menu. The profile of callers is also a key aspect to be considered while designing the menu structure. If you have multi-lingual callers, then the choice of language should be the first level of menu. If you have multiple products, then the product that receives the maximum calls should be placed as the first option in the menu. Care should be taken to design the menu in such a way that the maximum number of clicks that a user has to make before a resolution is obtained does not exceed a specific limit. In other words, you want the menu as lean as possible.
4. Analyze After: Once the menu has been designed and is operational, it is important to continue analyzing parameters such as the number of options to choose before call resolution is obtained, the call abandonment rate, and the number of calls that are routed to a live agent. These will give important information on how to tweak the IVR menu. The ideal menu is structured to reduce operator talk time and to provide the shortest route possible between two points. For example, if the number of options that customers have to choose before a resolution is reached is high, then you may want to further flatten out the menu structure. If call abandonment rate is high, it is possible that a lot of calls are being routed to agents and then made to wait until an agent becomes free. Viable solutions could include increasing the number of agents, or alternately, converting more services into self service. You need to analyze your cost here as converting items into a self service database structure can be more costly than hiring a live agent, or vice versa depending on the nature of your calls and the skills of your agents.
5. Help at Hand: A customer should never feel abandoned during the call and it should be easy for the customer to reach a live agent at any point during the call. If speech recognition engines are used along with the IVR menu, then it is important that after a specified number of failed attempts, the call is automatically routed to a live agent. Similarly, a customer who is unable to reach the option he wants after a specified number of options must be automatically routed to a live agent. When a customer is placed on hold, it is important to give him information about the expected wait time and also have an option for call back in case the wait time exceeds a certain threshold. Let them know how many callers are ahead of them in the queue. Even if this is an outlandish number like something over 100, if the number is decreasing after each prompt interval, it will give them reason to stay.
6. Integration: An IVR menu which requests callers to authenticate themselves using data such as date of birth or account number should be well-integrated with the rest of the hardware, databases and applications in the call center. This integration is paramount because you never want the caller to repeat the authentication information when they get transferred to a live agent. This usually makes an already angry caller much harder to satisfy. As soon as the call is transferred to an agent, all details of the customer including transaction history as well as purpose of the current call should be available to the agent. This is one of the most crucial steps that can not only improve customer satisfaction levels, but also help in reducing call duration and improving agent utilization without compromising on service quality.
7. Service Level Commitments: The IVR menu should also take into consideration service level commitments and targets that the call center has with the organization. A well designed IVR menu should help the call center in achieving the key performance metrics without sacrificing customer satisfaction levels.
8. Cater to the Frequent Caller: While an IVR menu should have detailed prompts to help a novice caller navigate easily, it is equally important to cater to the frequent caller who wants quick service. Voice prompts should be so designed that a customer can press for an option in the middle of a prompt or at the beginning of a prompt set. This enables expert callers to navigate the menu faster than a novice caller hopefully making your long term customers stay your customers.
9. Call Center Agent Profile: This is also a key consideration while designing an IVR menu. Agent skill sets should form a key input into the menu design process, so that the IVR menu shall help achieve load balancing between different skill groups. Each branch of the menu tree which ends with a transfer to a live agent should be approximately load balanced such that the number of callers who reach the end node in each branch has a proportional number of agents to handle the calls.
10. Availability of Technology: While designing an IVR menu, the availability of other technology in the call center such as a skill based routing ACD, ability to seamlessly transfer information captured through the IVR menu to the agent and so on should be taken into account. For instance, if it is not possible to transfer the authentication information to the live agent, then it is better to not request for authentication information through the IVR system as much as possible.
Ultimately, an IVR menu should be designed keeping in mind customer satisfaction as the end goal and the service level commitments as the constraints. This will ensure that you maximize the effectiveness of the IVR menu and offer a pleasant experience to your callers.
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