Ivr - Excellence to Customer Service

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rates and continue to fine tuned the IVR. This is something that the company has to do consistently and seek for oppoturnities to improve. To measure the effectiveness of their IVR system, US Airways does a thorough success analysis approximately twice a year. Some of the metrics they looked at are transfer rate, average time in IVR and task completion rates.

Transfer rates refer to This refers to the rate at which callers must be transferred to a live agent because the system doesn’t understand what the customer asked. This happens when the solution that the system proactively offers isn’t correct, and the caller has to request something else. This could mean that the IVR’s speech recognition vocabulary is missing terms needed for understanding the caller’s intent.

For average time in IVR, This refers to the overall time callers spend in the IVR before finding the solution. Ideally, you’d want callers to get their answer from the first solution that is offered (instead of having to key through several options). If the average increases, or is longer than the time it should take to get an answer from the first solution, this could be another indicator that there is a mismatch between the customer’s needs and what the IVR is proactively suggesting.

Lastly task completion rates, This refers to the rate at which callers solve their issues through the automated system. For example, if you were a bank and a customer wanted to transfer funds, were they able to do so just using the automated system? For scenarios that don’t require an actual action (e.g. checking the status of a flight), you can make this determination by asking, “Can we help you with anything else?” Then you can measure instances where the customer responded with “no.”

Conclusion

My conclusion on IVR in delivering a great customer service is pretty neutral. IVR is a smart investment and an important tool in delivering a more complete customer experience. While having an IVR system is indeed proactive, it still requires the customer to make the first move which is to call. The company must find ways to improve and keep up with the technology, otherwise they will just remain stagnant. And problems that can occur if it isn’t deployed and maintained intelligently. The goal of using IVR is to reduce customer effort and increase service efficiency.

References List

1. The Road to IVR Excellence - The Romance of Lee Lee by Khong Bee

2. How US Airways Delivers Proactive Customer Service Using Their IVR 
(http://csi.softwareadvice.com/how-us-airways-delivers-proactive-customer-service-using-their-ivr-0913/)

3. IVR - Business Advantage or Disadvantage? 
(http://www.simplifyingservice.com/blog/ivr-business-advantage-or-disadvantage)

4. How IVR can still become a self-service success with your customers 
(http://www.mycustomer.com/feature/experience-technology/how-ivr-can-still-become-self-service-success-your-customers/167575)