When Customers Call, and They Will, Will Your IVR be Ready?

Transcription

1 A FROST & SULLIVAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY When Customers Call, and They Will, Will Your IVR be Ready? In Collaboration With: View the ondemand version of the ebroadcast:

2 As many reports have shown, customers are more frequently gravitating toward online tools and other self-service channels when they need an issue solved. But the fact of the matter is, call volume will not drop significantly any time soon. Though most people may prefer other channels, customers will still call, often because those other tools didn t provide the answer they needed. People don t hate IVR, they just hate bad IVR. Nancy Jamison Principal Analyst, Customer Contact Frost & Sullivan And when they do call, companies must be ready to handle them well or they risk hurting customer loyalty. However, due to the emphasis on adding new channels amidst tight budgets businesses often neglect IVR, not taking advantage of enhancements that would help customers, much less fixing poorly designed IVR applications that frustrate callers. Frost & Sullivan recently teamed up with Genesys to conduct an ebroadcast, When Customers Call, and They Will, Will Your IVR be Ready to Greet Them?, discussing how businesses can deliver seamless, personalized experience through IVR, and how it can be integrated with other channels to create an excellent omni-channel experience. DO CUSTOMERS REALLY HATE IVR? It s no secret that IVR hasn t always been the customer s preferred way of contacting a business. It s often ridiculed and becomes the subject of many heated customer complaints. In fact, a 2011 Frost & Sullivan found that IVR was customers least favorite channel. However, after digging down further, it turned out that the reasons were mostly related to poorly designed and implemented systems. People don t hate IVR, they just hate bad IVR, said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Customer Contact with Frost & Sullivan, during the ebroadcast. IVR as a concept has a lot to offer. Since it first appeared in the 1980s, it has brought tens of thousands of businesses and their customers a lot of benefits, including 24-hour access to transactions and information. These tools have come a long way since then, with new features such as speech recognition and natural language understanding allowing for the development of better, more personalized systems. So why is IVR still such a maligned customer contact channel? The problem is largely one of neglect. Too many businesses approach IVR with a set and forget mentality, and have had the same systems in place for years without any attempt to improve or update them. IVR chugs away doing the same thing very well, but it s both underutilized and sometimes downright annoying, Jamison said. She relayed her experience surveying executives in the contact center industry on how they approach selling IVR technology. One executive with Genesys told a story about how a representative from a large national service provider once said to him, We haven t changed our IVR in 17 years. It s working great. 2

3 While that s an extreme example, it sums up the mistake many businesses make. Often executives don t even know what their own IVR sounds like because they don t call into it. The end result is an outdated, cumbersome experience that frustrates callers. CALL VOLUME IS STAYING STEADY One reason IVR is so neglected is because companies are investing in new channels of interaction, such as social media or mobile customer care. As customers increasingly prefer online and other channels, companies are scrambling to introduce new channels, so contact center budgets are skewed towards new channels of interaction, as well as agent performance optimization products, and less towards upgrading or replacing existing infrastructure. However, if you look at the data, IVR isn t projected to lessen in use. In 2014, Frost & Sullivan surveyed 305 contact center managers and other stakeholders. According to those respondents, use of IVR is expected to drop by just one percent over the next two years, and they expect there to be no significant drop-off in call volume. That s one reason why Frost & Sullivan projects the hosted market for IVR to grow 7.9% from 2013 to 2018, and the premise-based systems market to grow 2.2% over the same time period. That s not bad in an economy that favors investment in new channels and analytics, Jamison said. UNDERSTAND TODAY S CALLER While the calls will continue to come in, companies need to understand that callers have changed. That s why old-fashioned, unenhanced IVR no longer cuts it with today s customers. These customers prefer to use self-service first, and will often call only when other channels have failed to solve their problem. No matter which interaction channel they use, customers want a personalized, seamless experience. And people increasingly like to channel hop, moving between voice, text, mobile apps, chat, blogs, streaming video, community forums, and social media, often using three or more channels simultaneously. The bottom line: IVR must be integrated into the rest of the company s channel offerings, and provide a consistent, cohesive experience with other channels as well. When someone calls, the odds are that they ve been in touch previously through one of the other channels. Yet too many IVRs exist in siloes, with no sharing of information or context from previous interactions. That s a big obstacle keeping companies from moving from multi-channel environments towards an omni-channel customer experience, which ensures that data and context from initial contact carries over to subsequent channels. Omni-channel reduces customer effort, improves the customer interaction, and enables the business to tailor the customer journey. You are only as good as your worst channel, Jamison said. And if your IVR is outdated and siloed from other channels, you are missing out and causing a breakpoint in the whole customer journey. 3

4 THE MATURATION OF IVR IVR offerings have evolved greatly with all types of enhanced functionality. According to Jamison, two of the most important advancements were the addition of speech technologies and the ability to blend IVR with other technologies. Speech technologies led to the development of natural language understanding, which has flattened IVR menus and helps customers get where they need to go quickly. Some of the key features in modern IVR systems include: n Standards-based VoiceXML platforms n Natural language interfaces n Artificial intelligence-based responses n Best practices in UI design and refined application design tools n Links to proactive customer contact n Personalization when callers enter the system n Support for mobile devices, including Visual IVR on mobile devices n Multi-modal self-service on mobile devices Another significant development is an increase in the use of cloud-based IVR and cloudbased contact center systems in general. According to Frost & Sullivan research, 52% of contact center organizations in North America use a hosted cloud contact center solution. More importantly, by 2016, that percentage is expected to be more than 90%. Cloud-based systems have a number of benefits for businesses, including the ability to reduce upfront costs and add new features more quickly than would be possible in premise-based systems. While smaller contact centers were early adopters of these solutions, larger contact centers have emerged as the biggest market segment, with the highest adoption in communications and healthcare. 4

5 USE CASE: HEALTHCARE Jamison was joined in the ebroadcast by Aaron Wellman, Offer Manager, Cloud Self- Service with Genesys. They looked at some specific applications of IVR in different industries, and Wellman shared several examples of cloud-based IVR in use at organizations Genesys has worked with. As mentioned above, healthcare is one of the sectors with the highest adoption rates of hosted IVR solutions. There are a number of applications for IVR in healthcare, including appointment scheduling and reminders, collection of patient data, and automated prescription refill, among others. Wellman shared a case study from AstraZeneca, which moved to a cloud-based IVR from a premise system. Previously, most calls were handled by live agents, and with what little IVR automation the company did have, no reporting or analytics existed to tell how good or bad the experience was for the caller. When revamping the IVR, AstraZeneca was able to start small and add projects piece by piece, with little upfront cost two advantages of using a cloud-based system. The first step was using IVR to conduct a customer satisfaction survey. After seeing good results, the company added other applications, including brand loyalty program enrollment, program administration and an adherence program. The end result: $1 million in cost savings for each brand and an 80% reduction of live agent calls within the first year. USE CASE: UTILITIES The utility sector is one area where there is a lot of opportunity to reduce costs and customer frustration. Applications include service outage notifications, bill pay, and appointment scheduling and reminders. You are only as good as your worst channel. And if your IVR is outdated and siloed from other channels, you are missing out and causing a breakpoint in the whole customer journey. Nancy Jamison Principal Analyst, Customer Contact Frost & Sullivan A broadband satellite service provide, found that its premise-based IVR was a big source of customer frustration. The organization moved to a hosted system using a natural language speech application. The new IVR personalizes the caller s experience, by understanding context based on the services the customer is using and their contact history. The result has been a 300% increase in automation and a 43-second reduction in call time so far. The service provide r regularly reviews the IVR and makes improvements at least quarterly. 5

6 USE CASE: FINANCIAL SERVICES Financial services is really where IVR got its start, Jamison said, through touch-tone banking, and the sector continues to broadly deploy IVR. Western Union recently replaced an end-of-life IVR system. Like AstraZeneca, it had no way of telling how well its previous IVR was performing. Genesys performed a detailed assessment of the IVR and redesigned the application using a customer-centric approach, adding automated self-service to Western Union s payment kiosks. The company now uses analytics to evaluate the system, identify problem areas, improve automation and develop better rules for how calls are handled. The result was a 15% reduction in agent talk time and a 10% increase in automation, which has added up to an initial savings of $1 million year after using IVR on just 20% of volume. USE CASE: RETAIL The omni-channel concept first originated in retail, but has been extended to all vertical customer contact environments. The key to omni-channel in retail is to have all channels up to date, so that if a customer makes a purchase in-store or online, for example, the IVR is aware of that and presents order status and other common options first. Wellman shared a case study of a major big box retailer that needed to quickly replace its inflexible premise-based system in order to handle spikes in call volumes around the holidays. Cloud-based systems allow businesses to increase or decrease capacity as needed, as well as cut down on the time needed to get the system up and running. In this case, the retailer implemented a more personalized IVR for its customers in less than four months, resulting in a 15% increase in call automation and more than $6 million in cost savings so far. FINAL THOUGHT Since a business s customer care is only as good as its worst channel, it is critical that businesses look at the entire customer experience end to end and adjust all channels to create a cohesive, brand experience. IVR, which often serves as the front door to a business, is a key component of a multi- and omni-channel experience and refreshing this important channel should not be forgotten. ABOUT GENESYS Genesys is the global multi-channel customer experience and contact center solution leader. Our customer experience platform and solutions help companies engage effortlessly with their customers, across all touchpoints, channels and interactions to deliver differentiated customer journeys, while maximizing revenue and loyalty. Learn more at 6

7 ABOUT FROST & SULLIVAN Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company s Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO s Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 40 offices on six continents. Learn more at DISCLAIMER This Executive Summary discusses key insights and excerpts from a live presentation and panel discussion by Frost & Sullivan and Genesys on October 29, This summary presents industry insights, best practices, and case studies discussed by the presenters, in the context of the live presentation and panel discussion. For more details, visit Frost & Sullivan is not responsible for the loss of original context or the accuracy of the information presented by the participating companies. 7