IVR Nightmare Stories Part 1

We all know and love it, IVR HELL! Going through the prompts and finding our way to a place where we can finally talk to a live body. Some companies do IVR's well and most don't, but a lesson to all those companies comes from an insightful conversation I had recently.

I was talking to a colleague that runs a call center in the midwest. He said that when he joined, the IVR tree took customers on average 1 min and 45 seconds to get where they needed to go. With no surprise, the agents spent the first 30 seconds of every call apologizing to customers and calming the customers down. The companies satisfaction scores were quite low overall from the reports of the third party survey company that did customer surveys. They asked questions like, "Were you satisfied with the length of time it took you to get to an agent?", "Did you find your agent knowledgeable?", "Would you buy again from X company?" etc... Again, really poor scores.

My colleague went to work in changing the IVR structure and set up a simple tree that took no more than 20 seconds for someone to get in line to talk with an agent if they wanted. They went live with this structure and within days, customer satisfaction scores started going straight up. But the funny thing about this story is that not only did peoples satisfaction with their wait time go way up, but suddenly agents became much more knowledgeable. Customers were also saying that they would be more likely to buy from company X again. Hmmm. Did the agents become more knowledgeable in that short time? Did the company's products get that much better in that short time to want to buy again?

So what does this mean for us all in the customer service world? It means that we are dealing with complex individuals, that's right, INDIVIDUALS that have needs and wants that differ based on any number of factors. There are general rules that can sometimes be applied to people that help solve issues for customers, but more often than not, we don't see that customers just want to be treated as if they are your only customer. They want to feel as if the bond they have with you is authentic, even if it is just for a few minutes on the phone. We can plan all we want for technology to take people on a whirl wind journey of self service. But more often than not, people just want an authentic, empathetic voice on the other side that may not have the answer, but will listen and do their best to treat you the same way they would want to be treated!