I was very pleased with Myra's presentation, but even more so, I was left with a sense of new energy and desire to put her recommendations to use. I can't wait for Monday.

Tim O'Laughlin

The Coca-Cola Company

Tulsa City-County Library 

You exceeded our expectations!

Rhonda Fox

District IV Manager - Member Relations
Best Western International, Inc

How do we make IVR customer friendly?

In three weeks our small call center will go live with an IVR system. We've put this off for quite some time because we wanted to keep that "human touch", but now we're at the point where not implementing an IVR will cost us money and will not maximize our workforce. Can you give advise on how to make the IVR as customer-friendly as possible?

Myra's answer to How do we make IVR customer friendly?

I salute you for not simply viewing your IVR as a cost savings or productivity-enhancing tool, but also seriously considering the impact on your customers who are used to the human voice answering calls. 

I'll share four pieces of advice...advice that I insist all of my clients seriously consider with a new or existing IVR...

2. This is my personal pet peeve: Don't make callers repeat information collected in the IVR to the live agent they are transferred to. If you want callers to believe that the IVR can help them resolve a problem, respect the time they put into the IVR and don't ask for the same answers twice.

3. Give callers an option to navigate the system using touch-tone (keypad) or speech recognition. When I call the toll-free number on the back of my CitiBank business credit card, I give all of my information verbally. That's right. I 'speak' my account number and every option I choose. This is handy when I'm multi-tasking.

4. Make your opening brief. Believe me, there is nothing worse than having to listen to a gabby, rhetorical, verbose 30 second greeting. Say only what NEEDS to be said and move on so that you don't waste callers' time.

5. Do not immediately "re-direct" callers to your website. I recently called a company's toll-free number and after spending 40 seconds in voicemail hell and then holding endlessly for a live body, the agent immediately asked me, "Did you try going to our website?" I almost lost it. Obviously, if I had visited the website, I didn't get the help I needed and besides, isn't the relevant thing here the fact that I am on the telephone talking to YOU?!!! When a voice mail system immediately directs customers to a website it's like saying, "We'd rather not talk to you. So, please hang up and go to our website so that we don't have to actually talk to you." If you must mention your website, a good place to mention it is at the closing of the voice message.

6. Delay the call-recoding disclaimer. Yada, yada, yada. If you are only recording interactions between callers and live agents, not the automated part of calls, then hold off the mandatory message, "This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" to just before the call is being transferred to a live agent. Such disclaimers not only lengthen the opening prompt but have come to be taken as a cue that the caller is about to be transferred to a live agent and may needlessly frustrate callers when no such transfer follows. 

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