Your business is doing very well online. You don’t want to invest in getting a receptionist to attend to every call, risking dependency on physical presence of call attendant, his good mood to greet politely, and losing every person who’s call connects to a ‘busy line’. So here’s some good news for you. You can set the welcome pitch for every customer who calls in and track each of those calls. Call management is a simple and more effective solution to your call handling problems.
Call management is indeed becoming a priority for a lot of businesses and for good reasons. Here are some givens you started with:
- Virtual IVR Systems provide complete control over your business calls, allowing for efficient handling.
- Combining call tracking, recording, and answering at unbelievable low investments enhances overall communication.
- IVR applications not only streamline operations but also symbolize the brand of your company.
- Having a toll-free number can further enhance accessibility and customer satisfaction. If you’re wondering how to get toll free number, there are various service providers that offer them with different features to suit your business needs
But [Tweet ” Re-iterate to yourself: your automated reception reflects your brand.”] So here are the questions you need to ask before setting up your professional automated response:
Does the voice quality of your IVR communicate your image correctly?
Your IVR system is like the front door of your business and it is likely to put negative or positive impact on your customers depending on the way it is used. Being a crucial part of your customer communication process, voice quality of your IVR plays an important role. The pitch and tone of voice during those 30 seconds when your caller listens to automated response needs to remain top-notch in order to make that right first impression about your brand. Normally, customers dislike changes in pitch, timbre and volume. Hence, using different voices and prompts for your IVR may not be a good move.
Prompts need to be normalized for consistency in volume. You need to ensure that even when new prompts are added or subtracted, the consistency is maintained. Customers usually respond well if the voice of IVR matches with the persona of brand. Machine generated IVRs create challenges because they are difficult to relate to.
Even established brands like US Airways are flocking to next generation IVR systems in order to provide customers with self-service in their natural language. The airline has made sure that their customers get conversational IVR experience which is personalized as per consumer preferences.
Is your IVR system using short prompts and right options?
Customers generally feel annoyed if there is long list of things before them. If several options in IVR are leading your customers to same place again and again or if you make it difficult for them to reach out to you, you are essentially driving them insane and they carry a negative image for your brand. So avoid providing customers with unnecessary options. For instance, if customer calls into the company and wants to connect to his agent but he gets connected to unnecessary departments instead, you have lost him. It creates an IVR jail and customer may not call back ever. As a thumb rule, never exceed more than 5 options to choose from. Your customer may not have that much time to spend with a computer and his memory may run out of capacity. Instead of listing every department, list only general groups and let your customers reach the concerned person as soon as possible.
Are your customers going insane due to long IVRs?
It is for sure that customers are not interested to talk to a computer for more than 30 seconds. If time of your IVR interaction with customer goes beyond 30 seconds, it may turn against it’s purpose. Customers call your company in order to get information which is helpful and clear. Over-estimating customer’s attention span with long IVRs can frustrate him. People just want answers and if you end up providing useless information, chances are that they will prefer another supplier.
With the evolution of IVR systems, these common problems have been resolved to a great extent. An Interactive Voice Response can help you communicate your brand image appropriately. But it is upon you to ensure that it is indeed delivering a superior customer experience.
