Importance of IVR Analytics In Contact Centers

In this blog, we will highlight how collecting data and Interactive Voice Response analytics or IVR Solutions is essential for every company’s growth. You can no longer ignore the data from your IVR. It is one of the most commonly used touchpoints by customers. Millennials, boomers, and everyone alike still dials up a number for customer support. But what are you learning from your IVR metrics? How are you bringing value to that data? What analysis are you running? These questions should be answered if your IVR is tending to high-volume calls. 
While small businesses can still make an excuse for it, big brands can no longer avoid crucial IVR Analytics. Analyzing how your calls are performing can reveal many truths about your business. It can reveal major product drawbacks, customer experience levels, recurring issues, and much more. On a micro level, it can also allow you to improve how your agents speak with your customers. All the little things together can enhance business performance. 

The primary functions of IVRs are to greet your customers with personalized messages, play pre-recorded messages, collect feedback and automate basic customer support. In this blog, we will highlight how collecting data and IVR analytics is essential for every company’s growth. 

Your IVR is the first thing that your customers interact with. They may opt to speak to live agents if their concerns are not resolved by the IVR Service. However, IVR analytics can provide valuable insights like:

What percentage of customers opted out (or even tried to) of the IVR Solutions call flow by hitting zero or pound (#) to talk to an agent?
At which prompt(s) did most customers opt out of the IVR to talk to an agent?
How many customers who stated specific reasons for calling were routed to the wrong queue, and subsequently transferred?
How many calls were handled by the IVR itself without requiring any agent assistance (IVR containment rate)?
Which types of calls were handled by the IVR without the customer having to speak to an agent? 
What was the CSAT score of those IVR-only calls when compared to calls handled by agents?
The IVR analytics will holistically derive this information through end-to-end customer calls and give you an opportunity to improve. These days with better technology and AI integration, you can go a level deeper in real time. Smart IVR can identify customer emotions and route them to right skilled agents. Once you learn how to utilize your IVR analytical data, you can start to improve your IVR containment rate and improve first call resolution and CSAT score. 

1. Improved Customer Service:
Now, one might wonder what the big hullabaloo about IVR Calling System data is. It’s just any other business data, right? No. Misinterpreting your IVR data, one of the most used customer support touchpoints can hurt your finances really bad. Wasting talk time on the same issue over and over again will cost your company money. Above all, it will lead to frustrating experiences making many customers leave your company. Poor performance will also lead to poor employee satisfaction, leading to acquisition costs on both ends. In fact, never underestimate the impact of poor customer service especially when everyone is spoiled for choice. In fact, around 67% of customers happily switch brands more than once due to poor service. With IVR analytics it will be important to analyze the breakpoints where the customer may move from the IVR to a live agent. Can further enhancement in IVR improve the customer experience?

2. Understand the Customer Journey:
As a customer-facing business, your IVR Service cannot be seen in isolation. In other words, you understand how the IVR fits in the big picture of the customer journey. If I am a customer looking for some product information, then at what stage of my journey does the IVR come in and how can it influence my buying decision? Tracking this route will enable you to strategize better. The customer may have started the journey over a mobile app or website and could not get the necessary help from the website and landed into the IVR. So an omnichannel solution can provide such information about the customer journey. Should all the customers calling into the IVR have the same journey or the flow can be different (as Omnichannel integration will let know the intent of the call) and create a better customer experience? Can the IVR experience be made more personalized? Many companies detect their existing customers form registered mobile numbers, greet them and provide personalized information as per their business.

3. Better Decision-Making:
With insightful data, your decision-making improves rapidly. Your business managers will know where your team is lacking or what can be done differently. This is possible only when you choose to listen. IVR analytics will allow you to listen and react accordingly. Historical reporting will prevent your business from bleeding revenue. The CZ-IVR Solutions offers all sorts of insights like how many calls are getting dropped off from the IVR, how many customer calls were missed, how many calls are meeting the SLA, and other live analytics. These insights allow you to improve the IVR journey and your day-to-day operations as well. 

4. Get Ahead of Your Competition:
The competition is cut-throat in this economy. Every business has a legacy competitor that benefits every time you lose a customer. And customers have a lot of choices these days. Nothing is exclusive anymore so it is really important that you are amazing at what you offer. Making the right decision is enabled through data and effort. With real-time data and applying the insights gained by IVR Solution analytics, your team can gain a competitive advantage over those who analyze after the damage is done. IVR design and deployment should follow an agile approach. With IVR analytics, the flow can be enhanced and the new analytics can help to run as an A/B test. This regular improvement in IVR will lead to a competitive advantage and a real positive outcome of IVR analytics.  

Conclusion
With the pervasive digital channels, IVR still retains a dominating position in assisting customer service. With AI-powered Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems, the IVR System is transforming into a “voicebot” and becoming more versatile. With a voice bot, more analytics can be derived to better the customer experience. As always, IVR is still a popular choice for customer support. Harvesting data from it to generate insights is the right idea. It is high time we stop forgetting about these solutions after deploying them but continuously evolve following an agile approach. To learn more about how IVR analytics can benefit your business, contact our experts.