Is it time to get rid of your IVR?

Originally published on my personal Blogger site tobyallens.blogspot.com on 8 March 2017, during my time at Acme Packet. Reposted here verbatim from the original.

The short answer is yes. So how do you go about doing it?

Context!

Context can remove the need for an IVR.

Context can make speaking to a customer service representative easy, quick and painless.

Context can have a customer speaking to an agent in under 10 seconds.

How?

To answer how, let’s look at an example. The “Mayday Button” which appeared on the Amazon Kindle Fire in 2013. if you’re unfamiliar with the Mayday button check out the commercial for it on YouTube. There are many features of the interaction that are great, for example the agent can see the tablet screen and even control it. The most powerful thing though is the use of context. Context is what allows Amazon to connect a customer with an agent in less than 10 seconds (see here).

What do I mean by context?

Context is the identity of the user.

Context is knowing exactly what the customer was trying to do.

Using context Amazon can identify the customer. The user is logged in on a registered device. This in itself is a powerful advantage. Think about it. No digging up an account number. No trying to remember a phone pin that you haven’t used for 4 years.

Using context Amazon can identify what the customer is trying to do. Are they trying to download a video? Are they trying to connect to their TV? And so on. This means that they can be directly connected to a specialist agent. The agent that can serve their needs the quickest. This means that average call times drop and resolution rates increase.

All in all, this means greater satisfaction for everyone involved. The customer is happy that they didn’t spend an eternity on hold. The customer is happy that the first person they spoke to not only knew their name but could solve their issue quickly. The agents are happy because the customers aren’t frustrated. The business is happy because the productivity of their agents can go up significantly.

The best thing about this is that you can use the power of context with minimal changes to your existing contact center solution. Simple click-to-call functionality on a web page or mobile application can capture all of the context you need to select the set of agent skills and perform the initial identification of the customer. Even the simple act of performing a database query based on the calling party number can be used to identify the user. If your customers are anything like me they’ll be impressed and happy to have the phone answered by someone who users their name. If a customer is calling in a week after a bill was mailed to them then chances are they want to discuss or pay the bill. So you can send them directly to the correct department.