Why Marketers Should Care About the IVR

Customer waiting on hold in the IVR

Imagine this: You call an organisation; a brief moment of static silence before you hear –  

“Hello” – the muffled, robotic voice begins to read the options. 

Press 1 for Sales, 2 for Support, 3 for Accounts”  

The audio skips as the options are listed. You wait, but none of the options relate to youquery 

This should be easy.  

The Interactive Voice Response or IVR is the first point of contact for many customers when they call your organisationA poor customer experience could be detrimental to brand you have spent time and money building. Which is why Marketers should care about the IVR 

So, what can Marketers do? 

Here are three reasons why Marketers should invest in the right cloud customer experience solution that offers IVR technology 

 

1. The Impact on Brand Image 

Establishing a consistent voice is the foundation of building a strong brand imageBusinesses that invest in traditional channels such as television and radio but do not equally invest in other critical channels including the IVR expose themselves to inconsistencies in the brand experience.  Therefore, a strong brand voice through all communication points is imperative to enable the audience to connect with the content, thereby increasing brand loyalty.  

This is an opportunity for Marketing professionals to build customer relationships by offering a consistent and exceptional experience across every communication touchpoint.  

Create Consistent Brand  

The IVR is the tool that provides a strong ‘first impression’ for customers. Choosing the right technology that provides the ability to create consistent experiences is needed to create optimal customer journeys.

One such feature that ipSCAPE offers is Virtual Agent Voice. Virtual Agent Voice offers a variety of natural, human-like voices, with multiple language and accent options to cater to business needs.  The feature can be used in conjunction with the ipSCAPE Webservices connector to facilitate seamless self-service workflows in the IVRVirtual Agent Voice can provide dynamic customer messages and quickly enable access to information such as delivery status, or account balanceThereby satisfying the customer’s request efficiently by only serving options relevant to them. 

 

2. Customer Experience is the Differentiator  

Improving customer experience builds brand loyalty. Customer Experience is the sum of carefully curated marketing efforts across multiple touch points that strengthen or weaken customer loyalty. This is why investing in a technology solution that help businesses delight customers is critical to differentiate your brand. 

Invest in the Customer Experience 

Technology solutions that provide call-back and effective routing features create efficiencies in directing customer queries and reducing hold time 

As a feature-rich solution, ipSCAPE offers skills-based routing to help route customer queries to the most appropriate person. Skills-based routing is a call routing feature that ensures customer queries are handled by the most suitable agent through effective routing 

Listening to hold music for lengthy amounts of time is not enjoyable. Maintain Position in Queue is call-back feature that can minimise the time a customer waits on a call. The customer may choose to maintain their position in the call queue and receive a callback when they reach the front of the queue 

 

3. Gain Customer Insight 

Obtaining customer data is critical in understanding customer loyalty and advocacy for a brand. Marketers utilise customer data to gain insights and make informed decisions. This better helps formulate intelligent campaigns and strategies to ultimately increase profitability.   

Streamline the Customer Feedback process 

Net Promoter Score (NPSis a metric to evaluate customer satisfaction and measure and monitor customer loyalty. ipSCAPE offera NPS survey feature which collects NPS scores from customers as part of the IVR workflow. This data can be used by businesses to develop initiatives and strengthen long-term relationships with their customers and improve the way theengage.  

Furthermore, the ipSCAPE workflow can be configured to automatically send a customer to a supervisor if they input a figure lower than the threshold applied. This enables businesses to address customer concerns immediately.  

Marketing professionals spend a tremendous amount of time meticulously executing campaigns to increase sales conversions and maintain loyaltyHowever, when the same investment isn’t applied to crucial channels including the IVR, it can have a detrimental impact to customer experience, brand perception and overall satisfactionMarketers have an opportunity to re-evaluate current processes and address areas of improvement to ensure that all customer touch points reflect the brand. 

ipSCAPE is a cloud customer experience solution with over 15 years of experience. We help companies improve their customer experience through multi-channel offering- including Voice, Email, Web Chat and SMS. Contact us to find out more.