Best Practices to Follow While Designing IVR Calling System

Unlike traditional contact center technologies, IVR calling systems let organizations provide support to customers through both live agents and self-service.

By selecting from a menu of interactive alternatives or speaking to a live person, users using automated telephone systems may easily get the information they need or resolve their difficulties. Many different types of traditional and hosted IVR systems are available to the companies to choose from.

As a bonus, cloud-based IVR systems automate and speed up corporate communication with features like personalized greetings, call routing, call recording, call analytics, music on hold, email alerts, and CRM connection.

The cloud-based IVR calling systems may be modified and expanded by the customers to meet their requirements for communication. Yet research from Purdue University reveals that if customers have a negative interaction with an organization’s interactive voice response system (IVR), 63% of them would cease utilizing the organization’s goods or services altogether.

So, to boost customer happiness and loyalty, organizations need to provide a consistently excellent IVR experience. Best practices for the IVR user experience should be included throughout the solution’s design and development phases.

Furthermore, organizations should bear these recommendations in mind while making a choice, making adjustments, or putting into action an IVR calling system. You can make your customers happier and reduce their complaints by following these easy guidelines for IVR design.

Designing IVR for Customer Experience: 7 Best Practices

1. Allow Clients to Speak to Real People

As customers desire to investigate and handle basic problems without talking to a person, self-service is growing. When faced with challenging challenges, they will still require humanitarian aid. Despite the development of self-service, many customers still prefer human support. An IVR should allow customers to press 0 to talk to a human. Developers must ensure that consumers may always contact a live agent by pressing 0 when implementing self-service capabilities. The zero-out will improve customer happiness and reduce interactive voice response system abandonment.

2. Reduce choices and levels.

Multi-tiered IVR calling systems provide clients with more self-service options in many firms. With additional self-service options on the main menu, incoming calls have decreased. Consumers often struggle to access information or resolve concerns due to rising complexity.

Interactive voice response (IVR) software developers should consider user experience while creating new versions. They should restrict the tree’s depth to three levels and the number of alternatives at each level to five to keep things reasonable.

3. Make Sure Calls Go to the Right Agent or Division

Most organizations nowadays prioritize first-call resolution for customer service. The aim is to route the call to the best agent, department, or queue on the first attempt. IVR calling systems that accomplish this are in demand.

To succeed, an IVR system must accurately analyze user input and route calls to the right agent or department.

Additionally, the IVR system should provide agent-assisted support based on time zones. The IVR calling system must be flexible enough to redirect calls based on many parameters.

4. Instructions should be concise.

If the IVR solution’s welcome message is too lengthy and the menu choice recordings are confusing, customers may quit and attempt another alternative. Most companies’ early messages are promotional. Introductions must be 8 seconds or shorter to retain caller involvement.

The menu should explain each choice in 4 seconds. For callers to understand the welcome message and menu descriptions, they must utilize a common language. When writing welcome messages and menu descriptions, developers must recommend these principles to customers.

5. Real-world user testing of the IVR.

IVR calling systems must meet users’ corporate communication needs and deliver excellent customer service. Each organization has distinct corporate communication needs. Every customer must be able to utilize the IVR system quickly and easily. Before launching an IVR service, developers must test it.

Simulating user activities lets them accurately assess the IVR’s performance. IVR testing with real users may provide more accurate results. Developers may solve IVR bugs after this testing. IVR calling systems help companies enhance customer service at a cheaper cost. To increase customer happiness and loyalty, a firm must provide the best IVR experience. Both developers and users must follow best practices to guarantee that IVR systems meet users’ communication needs and speed up customer service.

6. Enable customers to return to their previous menu pick.

Based on caller information, complicated IVR calling systems must route calls to the proper group, agent, or queue. To offer proactive agent-assisted help, organizations must hire enough customer care professionals. Clients typically abandon the IVR system if they have to wait too long for a representative. While waiting for an operator, some callers return to the menu they were using. The IVR calling system won’t work if callers can’t easily return to the initial menu.

7. Prioritize Self-Service Options

The designers must rank the choices by importance and frequency of customer service and restrict the initial menu to five selections. Self-service channels are prioritized by call volume analysis.

For instance, the IVR may allow consumers to pay by pressing 1 on their phone keypads to speed up and automate bill paying. Pressing 2 to access additional self-service options is a crucial aspect of the system. Given the IVR solution’s intended application and predicted traffic, developers must prioritize these functionalities.

Wrapping It Up

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