Imagine that a potential customer is trying to reach your business. What happens if your phone lines are busy and that customer is automatically put on hold? Most customers hang up in such circumstances instead of waiting patiently. Isn’t losing customers this way a nightmare for every business?
We are in a fast-paced, technologically advanced era where customers want their queries to be addressed quickly. Delay in communication makes them leave, either immediately or eventually. Considering that, businesses have to use efficient ways to respond to their customers.
Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) is one of the most common ways to address customers over calls. However, nobody listens to answering machines that go on and on without conveying clear instructions. You need to use the right strategy for IVR to produce the desired results for your business.
How can IVR service help you improve customer experience? Continue reading to find out.
1. Hire a Professional IVR Service Provider
The voice that speaks on behalf of your company matters a lot. Why? Because this voice is what connects you to the customers first. Hearing a pleasant and professional voice over the phone makes the customers want to listen, even though they know it’s the machine talking.
Hire a good IVR service provider to find the right voice for you. Professional voice artists know how to use a consistent and reassuring tone. Plus, they have an idea of the jargon or complex sentences that can confuse the customers. Therefore, they can guide you through the whole process of creating and recording an IVR message for your business.
2. Keep Your Menu Short
Customers don’t want to hear a machine continuously speaking a whole spread-out of options. It becomes difficult for them to keep track of what they want to do next. The more options they have, the more they get confused. Plus, it becomes frustrating for your customer service agents to figure out what the customers actually want.
Keep the menu in your IVR recording short and simple to avoid any confusion. Ideally, it should not have more than 5 options. Limiting your menu helps the customers find an appropriate solution to their problem quickly.
3. Determine the Right Sequence for Menu
Customers find it frustrating to go through the whole menu before getting what they want. To make things easier, you have to optimize the sequence of options in your IVR recording.
An IVR service provider says that most of their customers are routed within the first few seconds. How? They keep their most revenue-generating area as the first option.
Another way to optimize your menu is to call out the departments before their menu option numbers. Hearing the department name alerts the customers to carefully listen to the corresponding number.
4. Integrate CRM & Other Business Applications
Nobody likes to repeat themselves again and again.
People use multiple channels to communicate with each other. Hence, most of your customers might have already given you their details through other channels. They would find it frustrating to repeat those details when talking to a customer service representative.
Integrating IVR with your CRM system gives you instant access to relevant data when customers call. You can use this data to provide personalized service to your customers. They won’t even have to introduce themselves again.
You can also turn your IVR into a self-service station by connecting it with other business applications like billing.
5. Optimize the Call Routes
Connecting your customers to the right person can have a huge impact on customer experience. For that, you should configure your IVR system with Automatic Call Distribution (ACD). What happens under this configuration? It’s simple; when customers choose an option from the menu, the system understands what they want and directs them to the most relevant and skilled agent for the job. This is also known as skills-based routing.
For example, John calls a company to know the details about a specific product. He selects the option of product information in the menu. As a result, he gets routed to an agent who handles product queries frequently.
6. Deflect to Other Communication Channels
People have different preferences when it comes to communication. Some feel comfortable on calls, while others don’t. Therefore, offer your customers more flexible ways of contacting you. Give them the choice of moving their interaction to other channels, like SMS or social media platforms.
Deflecting calls saves time for your agents too. They can respond to the customers faster through other automated methods, allowing them to serve more people in less time. In short, you won’t have super-busy phone lines if you divide the caller traffic over other communication channels.
7. Update your IVR Service Regularly
Do not use the same IVR recording for years and years. Customer demands change constantly, and you have to keep up with them to survive and grow in the market.
Adjust and improve your IVR system regularly with the help of post-call IVR surveys and relevant technological tools. Keep a check on the most popular queries of current times, and introduce stronger self-service options if you can. One of the best ways to assess the relevancy of your IVR system is by listening to it as a customer.
Also Read: 3 Major Benefits of Interactive Voice Response System For Businesses
Final Words
Customers are not a big fan of IVR because who wants to listen to a machine anyway, right? It’s high time that businesses use it the right way to enhance customer experience. A top-rated IVR service can help you utilize your IVR system in the most optimized way possible.
If you want to record an effective IVR message for your customers, get in touch with us at Studio52 – Media Production Company. We are a professional IVR service provider based in UAE who can get the job done right! Don’t forget to check out our other audio and video services too.
