Our Customer Experience Consultant Steve Hindley discusses How to Review and Improve Your IVR, along with the benefits of improving your caller experience in the latest Call Centre Helper article #customerjourney #cxtips #cxstrategy
Is your IVR driving people away?
Have you ever taken 5 minutes out of your busy day to ring your own company and navigate through your IVR from the point of view of your customers? Have you got any idea of how your calls are being handled by your phone system and agents? If you answered ‘no’ to either or both of those questions then it’s time you put yourself in the position of one of your callers…
Make a coffee, sit down and go through your system to see how efficient (or not) it is.
We all know how quickly things can change within a company with staff turnover, different departments, different services, different contacts…but what about the IVR?
For many business owners, once the IVR is in place it gets taken for granted – sits there doing its job quite happily, but starts to feel a little stale and unloved after a while. To give your valued customers the service they deserve, your IVR needs to be all-encompassing but not exhaustive, informative but not monotonous.
And that’s exactly what we can help you with.
IVR Menus should be kept to a minimum of options, ideally no more than 4 or 5 per level; nobody likes sitting on the end of a phone listening to a list of menu options for 2-minutes or more– they glaze over and just press # or 0 to speak to a human.
Speak to your agents and ask them about the demeanour of callers once they’re speaking to them. If your call handlers are regularly faced with disgruntled, fed up callers, is there something your IVR menu can do to improve their journey through your customer service?
Self-service options are brilliant – but are yours efficient, and, more importantly, accurate? There’s nothing more frustrating than surviving an automated Spanish Inquisition to then hear, ‘I’m sorry, there has been a problem processing your information at this time, please call back’. They most certainly will not want to call back…so don’t even go there!
Look at your call data and act on it – it will give you vital information about caller abandonment rates, such as at what stage in the system they hung up and how long they waited before they did so. This will help to produce a tailor-made IVR system and stop mistakes being made either from the callers’ behalf, or from your end – nobody likes to admit it, but we all make mistakes occasionally.
Would you like a second opinion?
Request your Free IVR Review…
Request your no obligation FREE Pre Agent IVR Experience Review below.
Not got an IVR system in place, no worries we can help you design the perfect caller experience call us on 0161 850 3033.
The top 5 mistakes when implimenting IVR Messages
We create a lot of IVR menus for some very reputable companies, but you’d be surprised at how many companies don’t have comprehensive and easy to navigate menus, before they find IVR Recordings of course.
I’m sure you’ll have a few companies in mind who could really do with simplifying their current menu. Usually larger companies need IVR menus because their call handlers cover many different aspects of their company, with a lot of departments comes a lot of options and usually a lot of confusion.
We can think of plenty of ways to improve your current IVR System or give you some pointers to consider if you’re thinking of getting some recordings. In our opinion these are the top five mistakes made in IVR recordings.
Options Overload
Calling a company takes time, if there’s a long introduction at the start of your IVR, it is time to consider cutting it down. The issue is you’re providing a lot of irrelevant information to someone who might know exactly what department they need to speak to, especially if they have called before, forcing your caller to endure a two minute spiel that likely infuriates them before they’ve even reached your menu. We’d advise to only really have the necessary bits and bobs in the welcome message, after all it should be just that, welcoming! Avoid including your company history here as this is best saved for your on hold messaging.
Massive Menus
Your menu should be really straight forward with clear directions for the caller so they know exactly what to select. Having a simple IVR menu will save you time and money, meaning calls are directed to the right department first time, rather than having your customer passed from one department to the next which not only takes time for your employees but leaves your customer feeling like they’ve been passed from pillar to post. We’d ask you to consider where your options eventually lead to, if more than one option leads to the same department then merge them!
No Exit
It’s a familiar story, you need to make an important call but know you’ll be placed on hold so try to do so on your lunch hour or after work. When a customer takes time to contact your business, your IVR system should reassure them immediately that they’re query is going to be resolved quickly and hassle free. There’s nothing worse than calling somewhere and missing the options, either resulting in a panicked press of the wrong option in the vain hope it was the right one (likely wasting time when they get through to the wrong department and have to be transferred) or it means the caller has to hang up and re-dial. This could all be resolved by one last message, to hear the options again.
Melancholy Music
Call us bias but we hate rubbish on hold music. No matter how big or small your company is, you should come across as professional, particularly when the first point of contact your customer has with your business is through your phone system. Playing a muffled recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons into your callers’ poor ears for twenty minutes doesn’t quite give off that image. We’ve got a range of music available to suit lots of different types of business. Do you think it’s time to change track yet?
IVR Journey
Finally the most important point we’d like mention is that your IVR is never finished, you need to keep it up to date, interesting and relevant to the direction your business is taking. Managing your IVR system is really important, if you don’t think any of the mistakes above apply to your current system then we’d advise you to take the customer’s journey and call your company to listen first hand and see how easy your options are to navigate. This should highlight any areas to you that you think could be improved and simplified for your customers. Once you’ve done that, it’ll be time for you to give us a call!
What makes a good IVR Script?
We love it when clients ask us this question because it shows they care about the customer experience. What makes a good IVR script is a very good question to ask because the language you use, the length of each messages and how you structure the overall call flow can make or quite literally break your callers experience.
IVR scripts should get right to the point and be as short as possible
Your callers want to speak to a human being as quickly as possible so writing lengthy IVR prompts that delay being connected to a real agent is only going to cause frustration.
Keep each prompt as short as possible while still giving the caller all the relevant information and try to reduce the number of options if possible to keep the caller moving through the IVR system.
The script needs to be congruent with your brand
This is all down to your use of language. Corporate companies such as insurance firms, banks and legal practices should most probably adopt a formal approach to instil confidence and reassure callers. Companies in creative industries might opt for a more informal style script to match their brand.
Think about what happens when/if the caller enters a call queue
You might think once a caller has been guided to a department that's the end of the script but what happens if the caller has to wait to speak to an agent and enters the call queue? What do they hear? Silence? Music? Their position in the queue?
At the very least you should have a music track that matches your brand to keep callers engaged and ideally you should have music and voice messages to give out relevant information. For example if a caller needs their account number remind them whilst they’re in the call queue so they can have all the information to hand.
For callers in a support call queue you can tell them where to find answers to frequently asked questions.
Taking the time to fully map out each call flow and IVR script will have a positive impact on your caller’s experience.
So there you have it our top tips to help you create a great IVR Script.
Still need some help? Then get in touch, call 0161 850 3033 we offer a free 20 minute IVR Script consultation.
How many levels does your IVR Menu have?
If your IVR takes callers more than four layers into the IVR Menu System then you're probably upsetting your callers and causing extra stress when all they want to do it talk to you.
This might sound like we're talking ourselves out of a work but it's also our job to help clients to rationalise and simplify their IVR System so it works for callers.
So let us take your maze of IVR options and sub menus and work our magic.
Your callers and customers will love you for it!
Call us on 0800 0112 123 or email enquiry@IVR-Recordings.co.uk to get started.
Welcome to the new IVR Recordings Website
Hello and welcome to our new look IVR Recordings website, we hope you like the refreshed style and additional content.
We've got lots of information and audio samples of IVR Message Prompts to make your call centre sounds great. If you need professionally recorded IVR Prompts for your telephone IVR System then we're the people to talk to!
You can also Request a Call Back or Free Quotation here
Keep checking our blog as we'll be launching some exciting new content over the next few weeks.
If you're looking for On-Hold Marketing Messages then visit our sister website www.iNarratorOnHold.com