IVRs - love them or hate them?

As a IVR user and designer, I love well designed IVRs and detest poorly designed ones.

A well designed IVR is customer friendly, complements your brand with a well designed persona, is easy for callers to quickly get what they need then get out, but also allow for callers to easy get the right person for complex transactions.

For example, if I am in a hurry and need to check the status of my flight, I want to make a quick call to an IVR and get the information I need. I don't want to talk to a person in this scenario because frankly, I don't have the time and am already aggravated with the leisure traveler in front of me that has not seen the news since 2002 and tries to go through screening with their shoes on or a cell phone in their pocket.

However, if I have a complex question about a ticket that needs to be changed, changes I need to make in my schedule due to flight delays, etc etc...I do want to reach the right person to help me quickly and not be transferred even once.

A great IVR can accomplish all of this...and personalize the experience for the caller. A poorly designed IVR can turn an already unhappy person into an screaming raving maniac in under 30 seconds....and let's be honest - I don't know many people who call a call center to talk about how happy they are with their service.

Unfortunately, there are more bad IVRs that good ones. The best IVR systems are designed to complement your customer strategy, mission, and make sense for callers in multiple demographic groups. Bad IVRs have too many menu options, options that wander everywhere but where you want to go, and make it an Act of Congress to reach the right agent the first time.

I have had clients who insist that their customer base hates IVRs and will never use them change their tune after implementing a solution that uses the right voice, the right announcement scripting, and friendly options. Before my design, their IVR prevented callers from pressing 0 to reach an agent in key places, used inconsistent voices, and had scripting that made no sense to the caller and did not enforce the brand. Some key players at this client insisted that "our customers don't use IVRs".

My team designed a solution (without buying new hardware or software) that used a voice and scripting that reinforced the brand, provided easy options that were understood, and provided value to callers looking for quick information.

Not only did the customers use the IVR, they also told the agents they spoke with how much they loved it. It saved the customers time, aligned the information with the web site and agent available information, saved the company money, and enforced the brand and the customer experience.

So don't slam IVRs because of bad designs - slam the designers who designed based on a lack of understanding of best practices.

Kristen,

I've been in the contact center field for twenty (20) years and have disliked IVR's for nineteen (19). They are a very real, root source of customer and agent dissatisfaction and have served only to distance organizations from their customers. A clear case of a technology developed and implemented with little regard for the user experience.

Cheers,

William

However, we all have been to that company that transfers you to 10 people before you hopefully get the correct person. Behind the scenes on these IVR's is skills based routing, that is designed to get you to the correct person when you call.

We can't have it all, we have personal service, with someone that can't possibly answer all questions, and will transfer you to someone who does, or we have an IVR that does this for us.

I don't like IVR either, but I do believe it uses my time better when I call someone that has a well designed IVR, gets me where I need to be, and gets me on to other business without having to whine about being transfered to Buzzards Breath, Wyoming or Ickygick, Alaska.

I'm agree with Niek, I don't mind using a well-designed IVR. There are some situations where I have even wished for more (!) IVRs and automation:
1) Queuing up for a self-service task: When the task that I want to accomplish is simple and I don't need to talk to an agent, I don't appreciate having to wait in queue for minutes (or tens of minutes)
2) Lack of after-hours self-service: When I am forced to take time of my busy workday for something that I could easily do on my own after-hours when it is convenient for me
3) Lack of basic information: When I'm on the go and need only to know the location of a store or their opening hours, I wouldn't need to talk to a person if they had an IVR with that basic info option
4) Annoying phone-tag appointment reminders: Provided that the appointment is in my calendar, I'm not going to bother responding to the receptionist's voice mail. Just hit me with an outbound IVR with "press 1 to confirm".

Regards,
Kirsi

I agree with everything you said there Susan. Assuming we dont have the rsources to answer every call immediately and be able to resolve the enquiry IVR are an effective way of managing calls.

We have found that the flow, scripting and voice of an IVR has a huge impact on its success or otherwise.

For example, we have just had some stats back on an IVR redesign project where we kept the same structure but rescripted the options. Analysisng the problems and researching with the clients customers we discovered that the word "payment" was causing a large number of miss routes. The problem being that the word meant something different to callers than to the business and was therefore being routed to the wrong team. Having remedied this and other smaller scripting issues the number of miss routed in the first 6 months has dropped by 120,000.

I believe that there is a better way than using IVR’s.

VELUX is the most successful roof window company in the world yet it continues to invest heavily in customer service and has developed its Great Britain and Ireland call centre into one of the most respected in the industry.

Using a systems thinking approach, they dispensed with the traditional contact centre methods including the use of IVR and created a new strategy that was completely focused on giving their customers a world class service to match the status of its brand.

During the "Check" phase of systems thinking intervention it was found that customers didn't want to interact with a machine. The IVR was proven to be the root cause of customer dissatisfaction, despite it being a very simple IVR system with only four options it still created a lot of customer resistance. Customers were adamant they wanted to speak to a human being and they saw that an IVR served only to distance the organisations from them.

After the change VELUX was chosen as a case study by a researcher from Loughborough University who was exploring the impact that a systems thinking approach to the design of call centres has on employee engagement. His independent research showed beyond doubt that employees were more engaged with the work and the customers received an exceptional level of service – all achieved by understanding customer demand, and setting the organisation up to deal with it efficiently & effectively.

May be it is a British thing? :)

I think it depends on the design of the IVR. if it was short, to the point, and will help me -as a customer- to reach my destination, it would be great.

but most of the organizations I experienced, had a long IVR, which gave me a -Ve experience as a customer.

on the other hand, I called my new telecom company, and surprisingly, they didnt have an IVR. which ,for me as a customer, was something great, as I didnt have to listen to the different options, and wait on the line for long time. it gave me a great experience, which helped in increasing the opportunity for me to be a loyal customer to this telecom company.

I completely agree with Michelle's comments. She is spot on.

A pleasant and effective IVR experience IS possible if you design the IVR application properly and make it intuitive enough for the user to navigate and get what they are looking for. The reality is that many IVR applications are poorly written, and they contribute to the overall poor perception of IVRs.

That being said, perhaps one of the most common complaints I've heard from customers (and their customers) is that they still have to select from a menu of options, and this takes time and effort. It becomes even more inconvenient (and potentially dangerous) when trying to do this from a mobile device while driving or trying to perform another activity. Advances in natural language speech should alleviate this and make the interaction "menu-free" while providing an even more natural and pleasant user experience.

Let's be clear IVR's are used to take costs out of service provision. If the incoming demand is simple and unvarying having a IVR at the front end may be effective. However, when demand is complex and variable it is an expensive mistake having an IVR as this will drive up costs and the quality of the service down. The idea that service is merely transactions is a typical command & control management thinking. This is flawed as it treats all demand as work to be done and takes no account to all of the failure demand that arrives due to this transactional behaviour. There are many examples in the UK where this command & control style drives up costs and drives down customer satisfaction. You only have to see what has happened in the DWP and HMRC (UK Governement depts) to see how bad the service gets by command & control managment thinking and the use of IVR's.

In essence it is better to have the necessary expertise at the front end of the process and get it done right first time.

So I am still of the opinion that IVR's are bad news for Customers.

:Laurence

Uttam, I still think there are bad for real customer service but pleased to see that they obviously fit what you want to do.

Regards

I hate them they are impersonal and in my experience show a total lack of wanting to help the customer. Customers get frustrated having to listen to endless announcements and having to choose options when all they want to do is speak to a human and get help or even place an order! Company’s who use this terrible technology should be careful as customers will move away from them when they find an alternative company that provides a customer centric service.

I am with William on this one Company’s that use them have little regard for their customers.

Regards
Laurence

In the end, an IVR is a machine with a nice piece of software. That is it... no hidden agendas....nothing.
Regretfully, a lot of people in the business assume miracles from their IVR's or program it, based on false assumptions. internal mechanisms and processes, instead of the customer experience.

There are multiple scenario's where a well set up IVR will optimize the workflow, without being a nuisance to the customer. For instance, in the case of unexpected peaks in call volume, for quick routing within your organisation based on skill set, to gather customer information before transfering to an agent or to inform customers about certain issues.

Personally, I do not mind a well set up IVR. It's the multiple menu's with 5 or more options I do not like. It's the promise that my call is important and that I am the next to be served... for 30 minutes. It's the question to put in my customer account number, only to be forced to repeat it to the agent, because it is not transfered to his/her screen.

When the day comes that the customer service managers use the IVR as a tool, instead of a solution to every staffing problem they have, it will be re-appreciated.

Well said Mr. Bosch. 100% agree.

-Brad Lindemann

I love IVR.

It is because most of the IVRs I have called has the menu/option to find the information I call the IVR in the first place. And the IVR seem to provide the information as soon as I press few keys. It is faster, I do not have to speak to human agent and explain my required information and normally, IVRs do not keep me on hold. They keep me on hold only when I am in a Q to speak to an human agent!

Most of the time, IVR keeps a record of my call, so I always have something for any future reference. It has been specifically useful when I lodged any complaint.

I also feel more secure while doing any transaction using IVR as I am not giving out by credit card details to any human, but to an harmless machine!

I love IVR.

It is because most of the IVRs I have called has the menu/option to find the information I call the IVR in the first place. And the IVR seem to provide the information as soon as I press few keys. It is faster, I do not have to speak to human agent and explain my required information and normally, IVRs do not keep me on hold. They keep me on hold only when I am in a Q to speak to an human agent!

Most of the time, IVR keeps a record of my call, so I always have something for any future reference. It has been specifically useful when I lodged any complaint.

I also feel more secure while doing any transaction using IVR as I am not giving out by credit card details to any human, but to an harmless machine!

I think that IVR's are the wave of the future in business and that love them or hate them, they are here to stay. The trick is to design them properly.

This is achieved by IT working hand in hand with the business owners to create the ideal IVR experience for customers. If there is true cooperation and clear requirements, then the IVR can be a tool to make sure that customers are serviced 24-7. They are designed to reach an agent during business hours if the customer "fails" within the IVR system.