Imagine taking your car into a body shop to have a minor dent repaired.

You wait for a significant amount of time for your spot at the front of the queue, and when the first available counter agent sees you, she holds up her hand to stop you from approaching the counter.
She seems scattered, busy, distracted; shuffling papers around, trying to flag down coworkers to ask them questions.
At one point, frazzled, she even meets your gaze again and says: “We’ll be with you in just a moment!”, but this doesn’t seem to instill confidence or reassure you that she’s ever going to give you her undivided attention. She’s all over the place! How is she going to handle your issue?
And so it can seem with your phone system.

What has been thought of as simply a method to “sort” callers, your company’s IVR is actually the first line of service. Even in its automated state, it is the first “human” that customers encounter when approaching your company. That’s the beginning of the impression about your company; not when they actually speak to a live person.
It’s your call as to whether you want a happy, calm, genuinely enthusiastic persona as their first impression, or that out-of-control stressed counter agent who doesn’t seem have anything under control.

Two key things to keep in mind to make sure that your IVR conveys your company’s competency accurately:

  1. See Your Company Through the Caller’s Eyes If you create an atmosphere of competency, togetherness, intelligence, and true friendliness, it says everything about you that the caller needs know.

  2. Make The Caller Know That They’re Being Treated Differently – and Vastly Better – Than If They Called Your Competition
    They’ll remember the company whose IVR was “just like talking to a staff person”.
    They’ll remember if the live agent was just as awful as the IVR that asked them a million questions and didn’t respect their time and patience, and – conversely – they’ll make the connection between a respectful and efficient IVR and how that was just like the agent they ended up speaking to.
    (This is why everyone dreads calling the Motor Vehicles Department or practically any governmental department ;)

Knowing that your IVR is a reflection of your brand and identity is a good start. Make sure you execute your call flow to reflect your company’s personality, to ensure that segues logically to the same consistent quality of your carefully selected live agents.

Of course, the tracking of IVR data is crucial to knowing how it is performing and to enable you to be proactive in implementing changes.
Loway has numerous solutions to enhance your IVR’s performance by offering reporting and tracking data, letting you know exactly where and when callers drop off. It’s a pro solution, and once that will take your IVR to the next level.

by Allison Smith

Allison Smith is a professional telephone voice and IVR voice talent known for her work in Open Source as the Voice of Asterisk, as well as much enterprise work with Bell Canada, Cincinnati Bell, Vonage, and is the voice of Cisco Meraki. She hates talking on the telephone.
www.theivrvoice.com

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