Businesses all over the world are making use of IVR technology these days. IVR is like a friend every business need. It is dependable, always available, and helps the business gain more customers. Overall, an IVR is the perfect solution for all business communication.
What is an IVR?
An IVR or Interactive Voice Response system is a telephony system that acts as a virtual receptionist. It greets the callers, takes their inputs (be it voice or buttons,) and routes the callers to their desired destination.
An IVR is also capable of intelligently segregating users based on certain parameters set by the business. It can also be used to make announcements and inform the users about the new offers or updates. IVR also acts as an excellent self-help tool for customers looking for a quick resolution.
All in all, IVR is a complete package solution to solve all your business communication problems. CloudTalk is an Interactive Voice Response system that helps businesses grow beyond country borders.
Benefits of IVR For Business
An IVR poses multiple benefits for any business, making it an essential solution for almost all businesses these days. Here, we have listed some benefits that might help you believe in the real power of IVR. Take a look at all that an IVR can do:
1. Brand Your Business Better
IVRs allow all businesses to present better and market their brand. With an IVR, any size of business can look completely professional and established. An IVR can help you play a professional greeting along with the division of different departments and different extensions.
So, even if your business is a small one and does not have that many agents to be divided into specialized departments, you can present so to the customers and obtain a better image for your brand.
IVR systems can also be useful to play marketing and promotional recordings for all customers to listen to. So, if you want to present your business in a better light or want it to look bigger than it actually is, adopt an IVR.
2. Improve Your Customer Experience and Satisfaction Rate
Customers want top class service these days. They want experts to listen to their queries, connect to the concerned department, and find a resolution from the best possible person.
An IVR can help a business by giving customers the satisfaction that they want. It helps with connecting the customers to the best possible agents and to experts in the department they are looking for.
An IVR is also capable of routing callers to their preferred language, region to make their interaction with the brand smooth and hassle-free, thereby ensuring customer satisfaction.
3. Save Time
In the fast pacing world these days, don’t we all want to save time and get the most done in minimum time. Customers are looking for instant gratification and would want their issues/queries resolved as soon as possible.
IVR can help in quick resolution of customer problems as it can act as a self-help tool and give the customers whatever information they are looking for. This feature of an IVR system makes it an extremely useful tool as it helps both agents and the customers. The customers get the information they were looking for instantly, and the agents are saved from the redundant and repetitive questions that hardly require any problem-solving skills.
Therefore, an IVR saves time for both the business and the customers, making it a handy tool for any business that wants to satisfy and retain their customers.
4. Reduce Costs
Businesses have a lot of operational costs and are looking for ways to cut down their costs without hampering their performance in any way. An IVR can help in cost-saving as it can be hosted on the cloud and also automate certain queries, thereby reducing the need for a large number of agents.
An IVR system, when hosted on the cloud, does not require any extensive hardware and saves costs for the business. It also helps by reducing the number ofagents required in the call center.
An IVR comes in handy when compared with phone calls and live chat option as it requires minimum investment and resolves all major customer queries.
5. Empower Your Agents to Perform Better
Every problem requires an expert these days. With agents busy solving mundane and repetitive questions, it takes away their time and problem-solving efforts. An IVR can help take the load off agents as it takes care of all the preliminary queries.
With the IVR focusing on basic questions, agents get the time to hone their skills and focus on the department they want expertise in. It also helps them by increasing their productivity and engaging them in complex problems instead of the usual mundane ones.
So, an IVR can motivate your agents to perform better and put their problem-solving skills to better use.
6. Provide All-Around Customer Service
One of the major factors associated with trust is the availability of any business. An IVR is available 24×7 without any breaks or problems. Even when the business is off, and the agents are unavailable, an IVR can help your customers navigate basic information or let them know that they’ll be called back regarding the same.
An IVR is like an always available receptionist that you have for your business. It helps and responds to customers all the time, without being biased while satisfying the customers!
All in all, IVR is the perfect solution for any business that wants to climb up the ladder of success. The system can be installed easily without any hassle and is easy to use and maintain. It will be an investment that takes your business ahead and build a loyal customer base.
AI in IVR?
These days, IVR is using AI to form conversations with the customers and build something known as a conversational IVR. According to Gartner, AI bots will power 85% of customer service interactions by 2020 and since we are already in 2020, let’s see what the year brings.
Let’s hope this is the year where we see more businesses adopting AI in IVR or more businesses embracing this technology that helps technology connect with humans. An IVR keeps all happy, from customers to agents to business to decision-makers. So, what are you waiting for? Go and try out an IVR service to see your business boom.
Niharika Gupta is a technical writer at CallCenterHosting, a prominent IVR System provider. She loves music and reading and has always been fascinated with technology. Writing about technology and other related topics gives her the utmost happiness.
She believes words have the power to change the world and is working on turning her ideas into words every day.