Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology is a growing industry that provides enormous benefits across a range of applications and use cases. Organisations can improve their customer experience, internal workflow, and overall efficiency by implementing cloud-based IVR to address call centre needs.
Choosing the right IVR voice response systems technology phone solution will vary between applications. It depends on a number of factors, including regulatory compliance (e.g. GDPR, PCI), customer base, and other industry-related specifics.
However, as a solution for operational improvement, IVR is universal.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Customer experience has never been more important than it is today. The modern customer will not wait longer than a minute on hold. To address this and ensure the best possible experience for your clientele, technologies including automated callbacks, call centre analytics, and conversational Ais can all be employed.
Together, these solutions empower businesses to handle more calls and reduce customer wait times. Up-to-the-minute customer satisfaction analytics allow you to hone the process even further, virtually guaranteeing improvements to your brand and your bottom line.
While chatbots and other online tools have been around for a while, modern improvements in sophisticated IVR Systems (Interactive Voice Response) allow customers to interact with and gain assistance from high-quality, sophisticated AIs directly over the phone. This reduces complexity, increases customer access, and removes the need for internet access, 2-factor authentication, and other barriers.
Consider the following when weighing the benefits of IVR for customer experience:
- In quickly growing, highly competitive industries, customer experience plays an outsized role as a predictor of success. This has now been the norm for nearly a decade or more, making the reliability and accessibility of IVR call centre technology practically mandatory.
- For many companies, improvements in customer experience can be directly shown to have a positive relationship with ROI. Cloud solutions with scalable costs, like those offered by IVR technology, make this link even clearer.
- The personalisation options provided by cutting-edge IVR will facilitate modern requirements for success: effective self-service technology and fast, highly adaptable call centre agents as well as happier customers acting as a customer service tool.
WORKFLOW EFFICIENCY OF IVR
Automation in IVR can almost certainly save your organisation money – the average cost of a single human-to-human phone interaction is now above £12, making AI financially appealing. Scalable Cloud solutions were designed with this sort of efficiency in mind and can adapt at peak times.
Scalability
100% uptime, 24/7 availability, and no lag time or inefficiency during spikes in call volume improves business efficiency and customer calls. These are the kinds of results that are available right out of the box with IVR, without even getting into the further automation that can be done with API integration.
Insights
Onboard analytics allow for near-instantaneous feedback, and automated survey data allows for even deeper insights – all without any increase to your workforce. This allows you to improve your services in real-time, meeting the complex demands of the modern consumer.
Workflow efficiency isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about rounding edges and making every aspect of your organisation run more smoothly.
Consider the following:
- In the past, efficiency has generally come with a high price tag: a larger or more highly skilled (and therefore more expensive) workforce. IVR for call centres or contact centres allows you to get the same results with less cost, so you don’t have to pass anything off to the customer.
- Phone calls are no longer simply two-way communication – they are a part of the digital technology ecosystem, with as many possibilities as any other messaging medium.
- IVR is a digital-analogue compatible system, taking in data in multiple forms through voice or alpha-numerics from SMS.
SECURITY & COMPLIANCE
There are two primary compliance standards in the IVR industry that are important to know for anyone looking to implement this technology.
Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance
This standard requires all software to be free of vulnerabilities related to payment cards (e.g., credit or debit). Only authorised personnel can access data of this type, and all information must be handled and stored safely and in an encrypted fashion. Cybersecurity emergencies are real, and your vendor should have contingency plans in place for a number of possibilities.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act (DPA) Compliance
The GDPR and the DPA, like PCI, are intended to serve the privacy rights of your customers. However, this compliance is related to general data protection, including health and patient data, rather than payment. Health information is highly proprietary and may not be sold or shared with third parties except under strictly regulated circumstances. Any IVR software company should clearly detail which of its employees is responsible for handling this sensitive data.
Security and compliance are critically important to the successful implementation of a unified communications product such as IVR technology. The following points should be taken into consideration:
- The National Archives and Records Administration has shown that of companies who lose their data and are not able to retrieve it within 10 days, 93% have gone out of business within a year – take security seriously.
- PCI compliance can be validated and certified annually.
- Compliance technology is often generally applicable – one company’s platform can be used at another company to the same effect. This can cut down on costs.
Conclusion
IVR software and Voice Recognition is allowing call centres and other customer-facing organisations to enhance their workflow efficiency and customer experience with proven ROI. By ensuring the implementation of such software is carried out in compliance with all the necessary regulations and standards, IVR data can be used safely, securely, and to great benefit. Once in place, analytics and real-time feedback, along with a nearly unlimited degree of personalisation through API integration, make IVR technology virtually unparalleled as a solution for today’s highly complex interactive spaces.
Need to know more about the specifics of how an IVR solution could be implemented at your call centre or business?
Contact us any time – our experts will be able to consult with you and find the perfect fit.
