IVR Design: How to Make It Customer-Friendly?

The primary goal of just about any IVR Service is either to aid a customer with just a request/task or to route such a call to that of an agent for assistance. The usage of self-service alternatives by customers for everyday tasks is on the rise in contact centers all over the world, which will lower the number of agent calls, the length of queues, and operational costs.

Giving your clients a number of drill-down alternatives to choose from will ensure that they choose the proper self-service option or queue. However, you must carefully balance your operational needs with the quality of service you provide to your customers. For instance, it's crucial to make it quick and simple for callers can speak to a live person if you're a high-end service provider, such as a luxury hotel or retailer. Low-cost product and service providers will prioritize self-service choices and reserve the ability to speak with a live representative for the very last step.

What choices do you offer?

Your aims will determine the response to this. Prioritizing the menu levels, options, and order will be made easier with a thorough examination of call purposes. Present the alternatives in the order that represents the most common requests if your main goal is to route callers to the correct queue. For instance, sales, technical support, and customer service; or concierge desk, front desk, and housekeeping. The same tactic—arranging your menu options to correspond with purpose volumes—can be used to promote self-service options. For instance: Change your password, check your balance, pay your bill, etc.

However, keep in mind that giving callers more options will just make them more confused and frustrated. They may well hang up or "zero out," which means they will select "0" to speak with an agent. As a result, if your major goal is to boost utilization of self-help options, implementing an IVR system is ultimately pointless. A caller is given up to five alternatives, and when they select one of those, they can navigate down as much as three sub-menus in the traditional tree structure, which has a main menu no more than five selections wide and three sub-menus deep. But less is preferable.

We advise periodically reviewing the actual usage of each option and eliminating or combining any that are rarely utilised. A caller is given up to five alternatives, and when they select one of those, they can navigate down as much as three sub-menus in the traditional tree structure, which has a main menu no more than five selections wide and three sub-menus deep. But less is preferable. We advise periodically reviewing the actual usage of each option and eliminating or combining any that are rarely utilised. 

When will the live agent service be available?

You can experiment scientifically with how far down [the choice for 0] appears; attempt to determine how much placing the option up front enhances your number of calls and how significantly burying it farther down increases the amount of hangups.