Telephone-based interactive voice response application and what it does for your company
Telephone-based interactive voice response applications are a wonderful invention for any call center or contact center. You can customize them for your company and the results are better customer satisfaction and lowering your company costs.
Telephone-based interactive voice response applications are exactly what they sound like. They are products that automate jobs that used to be handled by live call center representatives.
How do they work you may ask? Well let's say you call a company to ask about a bill, or for repairs. It used to be the first person you spoke to would be an operator who you would explain your issue to, who would then determine what group or department you needed to speak to. The operator would then begin the transferring process and you would hope that you did not lose your connecting during that time or some representative would not disconnect the call by accident.
Once you were at the correct department, you would then once again explain the situation to the representative who answered the call. If you happened to get to the right department the first time, then they would try to help you the best they could. You would hope during your call that you would not have to be transferred once again or more.
With a telephone-based interactive voice response application, it is a whole different situation. Let's take that same call. You dial the number and automated voice system comes on the line, no longer would you speak to an operator. You would hear a series of choices where you can simply state what your issue is, in such a manner as "Repair" or "Billing" or "New Services." You do not have to state the reason you are calling or try to explain to the, just simply say a one or two word reason and the interactive voice response application routes your call to the appropriate department.
By having the telephone-based interactive voice response application in your company, you save the cost of having the live operators, you have quicker call handling times, and you generally have better customer satisfaction as the customer does not have to repeat their reason for calling, once or twice during the beginning of the call.
There are some down falls to having this system as well however. Some people speak too fast for the interactive voice response system to pick up what they are saying. Some customers may have thick accents that the system simply cannot pick up on. However, the creators of the telephone-based interactive voice response applications are realizing this and are usually putting on the recording when you first call, if you would rather speak to a live representative press zero. So these systems can be a good or a bad thing for your company. It is up to the management team to make sure they are successful when setting them up originally.
