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November 18, 2010

IVR Systems Swapped Out for More Pleasant, 'Human' Ones



By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor



Ann All writes about reading a Wall Street Journal article about how some companies swapped impersonal-sounding voices on their interactive voice response (IVR) systems for more pleasant ones. The article must have inspired her: “I concluded such a tweak was worth a try if it was part of a larger effort to improve IVR usability.”

At least one of the companies mentioned in the article, All says, insurer Asurion (News - Alert) “seemed to get this, as the story mentioned that the company also rewrote its IVR scripts to offer an experience akin to what customers would get from a live agent.”

She also wrote “I also get the point that Karen Tiede, a reader commenting in Harvard Business Review, is making, that human agents can cross-sell and up-sell products to callers, something an IVR can't do (at least not well).”

Dick Hunter, All says, the former vice president of global consumer support services at Dell (News - Alert), “mentioned cross-selling as an opportunity for contact centers in a 2009 webinar on Dell's efforts to improve contact center satisfaction. To help call operations pay for themselves, Dell encouraged its agents to take cross-selling opportunities. An agent might mention that he or she noticed a customer's laptop was three years old, an age at which it makes sense to consider buying a battery, for example.”

Boy, the more things change the more they stay the same, huh? Six years ago, TMC (News - Alert) published a piece by Lois Brown, of Austin Logistics (News - Alert). Tell us this couldn’t have been written yesterday:

“‘Your call will be answered in the order received.” These nine little words could be the most costly words spoken to customers today. Yet, every day this phrase, or some variation, is voiced millions of times to customers who are routed through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems.

“After a decade of widespread IVR technology implementation 'primarily in the pursuit of speed and cost savings' the actual message that customers who are lost in long wait queues and endless feedback loops are hearing is, 'You don't matter to us.'

“The result is a costly backlash. By stressing speed over service, call centers virtually guarantee they'll end up annoying customers instead of helping them,” stated a Harvard Business Review report. Is it any wonder more customers are hanging up, permanently disconnecting their relationships with companies that no longer appear to value their relationships?”


David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Tammy Wolf


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