The best IVR service providers are the ones that are configurable and high-quality and are valuable not only for customers but for businesses as well. Customers are increasingly choosing self-help options and setting their own callbacks, reducing the stress of agents working in a busy call center. Eventually, agents becomes more productive, and customers are more satisfied.

By automating customer interactions using prompts, IVR services in India can reduce costs and increase productivity. Alternatively, they can be programmed so that calls are transferred to live agents. Having an efficient IVR solution for small businesses in place has multiple benefits. 

Challenges Faced by a Call Centre

Each day, call centers receive thousands of calls, and agents must deal with all of them with equal enthusiasm and zeal. Here are some challenges call centers to face while handling customer calls.

• Services must be available throughout the day, ensuring round-the-clock accessibility. A call center offers this service as one of its priority services.
• Dealing with them poses a great deal of difficulty due to the low ratio of staff to calls.
• There may be a high waiting time in long queues due to heavy call traffic, resulting in a large number of unattended calls.
• Untrained and inexperienced staff are unable to handle calls efficiently, maximizing First Call Resolution (FCR).

How can IVR Providers enhance your call center customer experience?

In contrast to popular belief, IVRs ensure customers get the best-fit agent or department to resolve their questions, not prevent agents from dealing with too many customers.

Poorly designed IVRs with vague menu options, without the ability to track customer journeys, quickly lead customers to the above conclusions.

When customers can’t reach a customer service representative, 67 percent hang up the phone. 68 percent attribute positive CX to working with the same agent, while 62 percent attribute it to the agent’s knowledge and resourcefulness.

Make your agents consultants

With IVR, your agents won’t have to handle tasks that slow down the operations of your call center, such as redirecting/forwarding calls to the correct department or answering questions with “obvious” answers.

Many times, customers have to answer the same questions every time they reach a call center agent, despite having called previously. One reason IVRs have become the least-favorite touchpoint for customers is because of this.

Your IVR should automatically recognize a caller’s phone number based on historical interaction with your business without delaying forwarding.

By building a smart call center that enhances agent-customer relationships, you should rely more on your agents’ knowledge and skills.

Integrations

IVR systems can be integrated with payment gateways and CRM systems for multi-channel customer service.

Integrating CRM into your business allows your agents to keep track of the customer journey across multiple channels. Incorporating the history of calls, social media, website, and chatbot interactions into an IVR makes it easier to address customers’ needs.

With seamless integration with your existing tools, the IVR gets the right information at the right time, making customer journeys easy to navigate. In addition, the customer can request to be forwarded to a live agent without frustration.

Handling calls predictably

By keeping records of a caller’s interaction with your call center, IVRs can deliver personalized menus or direct callers to the correct destination or agent more quickly.

Analytics

The right IVR provider like Knowlarity will speed up the identification of issues, and the quick fixing of them before your call center’s performance deteriorates.

Ability to Set Inbound Call Priority with IVR

Your customer service agents should have a system for prioritizing calls based on potential impact. In fact, about 50% of consumers stop buying from a company after just one bad customer service experience. Your business may suffer if you lose high-value customers. There’s no need for it, let’s be honest.

In an omnichannel environment, IVR technology provides extra data about the customer’s previous history and can be used to prioritize important callers or urgent matters.

Conclusion

In most cases, your IVR is the first point of contact between your business and your customers. The caller’s experience must be worthwhile and memorable, therefore. By reducing the overall amount of human effort involved in phone systems, Interactive Voice Response is a great tool that allows companies and organizations to handle higher volumes of calls, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction levels.