For all businesses regardless of industry, customer service is paramount. Traditional call centers are costly, but yours doesn’t have to be. When you choose CCaaS, or “contact center as a service,” you get call center benefits without on-premise costs. CCaaS refers to call center software hosted in the cloud. You’ll have a powerful call center without the expenses of in-house servers, maintenance, and software upgrades.
If you have CCaaS, you know how greatly your business benefits from it. To ensure you take full advantage of all CCaaS has to offer, you’ll also want to ensure you have an Interactive Voice Response call center.
What Is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?
IVR, or “interactive voice response,” is a self-service technology that lets your customers find what they need when they need it. Through a touch-tone keypad or voice input, your IVR platform mimics a human assistant to direct the inquiry to the right resource. It empowers your customers to solve basic problems or answer basic questions on their own, which transforms your contact center, setting up your business for success.
In modern ecommerce, setting up an IVR contact center is crucial for retaining customers. As life gets busier and technology evolves, customers become used to instant, easy online access to customer service help.
For example, customers are used to finding their shipment status with the click of a button. If they can’t easily follow up on their order, they’ll get frustrated and may look elsewhere for their next transaction.
The 2 Types of IVR Systems
The two kinds of IVR systems are traditional and conversational.
The traditional IVR systems ask callers to press a number that corresponds with their menu option. It then either provides the service or routes that call to an agent best suited to resolve the need.
On the other hand, conversational IVR uses speech recognition to meet your customer’s needs. It uses state-of-the-art technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and speech-to-text. Rather than use a robotic voice, Bright Pattern uses natural language technology to give your customers a more natural, conversational experience.
Both allow you to optimize your contact center in ways that promote efficiency for everyone.
The 9 Key Benefits of Setting Up an IVR Contact Center
The benefits of using IVR software in your CCaaS are numerous for both your customer and your business:
- Faster Service for Routing Basic Tasks – Gives your customers an interactive voice response option to take care of routine tasks like checking on an account balance, updating an order, or tracking a shipment. This also frees up your personnel to take care of more complex tasks.
- Faster First Contract Resolution (FCR) – Using customer analytics, your IVR call flow can route the call to the agent best able to assist your customer. This saves time and energy for everyone.
- Increased Customer Satisfaction – When your business solves customer issues efficiently, your customer satisfaction scores are higher. Happy customers are more likely to buy again from you as well as recommend you to others.
- Easier Navigation Based on Needs – By providing your customers with choices to best solve their issues, your IVR makes it easy for them to do what they want.
- Reduce Operational Costs – Digital assistants act as automated receptionists taking care of simple yet essential inquiries. Your business saves money in hiring, retaining, and training staff, resulting in higher overall profits.
- Improved Agent Productivity – The IVR system gathers basic customer information prior to routing the call to an agent. This gives your highest-skilled agents the ability to interact with their customers efficiently.
- 24/7/365 Access – Your customers will appreciate (and expect) the ability to receive customer service when it’s convenient for them. Digital assistants are able to handle inquiries around the close as opposed to a live person who would be limited to business hours and weekday schedules.
- Optimize Company Resources – Using technology to take care of basic tasks frees up your staff to be ready to handle the bigger needs. Your company saves money on labor and all it involves while simultaneously improving your overall customer satisfaction.
- Better Customer Service – By reducing customer wait time and call volume, IVR saves both the company and the customer time. At the end of the day, issues will always arise in servicing your customers. What will separate you from your competition is how you’ve handled those issues.
In business, there’s only so much you can control: shipping delays, supply chain issues, and world events are not in your control. However, what is in your control is the service you provide your customers. CCaaS sets the foundation for strong and cost-effective customer service. IVR optimizes it and leverages its true power.
Your Customers Expect a CCaas with IVR
While they don’t know what it’s called, customers know they want fast, easy self-service options. The customer journey has evolved and continues to evolve with new mediums for communication.
Different generations of customers prefer different communication channels. While younger customers may prefer text messages, an older demographic may still prefer the phone. As people emerge as new shoppers, so too will their communication preferences. If you’re not positioned to meet your customers where they are, you may miss them.
Gone are the days of simple call centers. Today’s customer wants to engage with their brands through technology, but only if it’s reliable. Your business wants to utilize technology, but only if it’s reliable. This is what makes Bright Pattern your ideal omnichannel CCaaS partner.
Optimize Your Business Through Contact Center IVR Technology
In addition to self-service options and call routing, your interactive voice response software can capture customer information. You can collect phone numbers, account numbers, and credit card information through your IVR application. You can also set up surveys for your customers to take when the call is completed.
Through analyzing this valuable data, you’ll detect patterns that allow you to anticipate events. Are there times that trigger increased call rates? If so, you can proactively manage for that increased demand.
By integrating IVR with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you’ll give your customers the ability to place orders over the phone. IVR can place robocalls with information or, as previously noted, survey your customers.
The more information you can gather about your customers, the better you’ll be able to serve them. Proactively setting up your responses to meet your customers’ needs today and tomorrow lets them know you value their business.
Can My Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Contact Center Be Compliant?
Simply put, yes. Adding IVR doesn’t do anything to make your CCaaS non-compliant. Your Bright Pattern IVR contact center maintains compliance:
- Full PCI Compliance
- Full HIPAA Compliance
- Full GDPR Compliance
- Full TCPA Compliance
- Full SOC 2 Compliance
- Compliance for the Visually Impaired
Because your IVR solution aligns with your business strategy, it is designed for workflows that make sense for your business needs.
Demo Your IVR Contact Center Today
At Bright Pattern, we believe communication is crucial to your bottom line. Improving your customer’s experience drives satisfaction and sales.
Your omnichannel Contact Center as a Service software sets your business up to deliver fast, accurate, and accessible customer service across all your messaging channels: voice, SMS, email, chat, bots, video chat, and social messengers. As new channels emerge, you’re positioned to quickly take advantage of them.
