Some of the operational challenges that contact centres face - especially in larger operations - which Visual IVR can alleviate include:

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2 Despite saving billions of pounds and countless hours over the decades, IVR has consistently been something that customers most hate about dealing with contact centres. IVR should already be a win-win solution for both customers and businesses: accurate routing and appropriate levels of self-service are good for everyone. However, a survey of consumer attitudes towards IVR 1 - one of many over the years - found that 83% of consumers thought that IVR provided no benefit whatsoever to the customer. Despite widespread prevalence - 57% of UK contact centres use touchtone / DTMF (dual tone, multiple frequency) IVR for routing purposes, with 6% of calls entirely dealt with through voice selfservice - IVR 2 has rather been taken for granted, with its basic functionality and purpose unchanged for a long time. Speech recognition has enjoyed a mixed reception at best, being seen as expensive to implement and maintain, and has still yet to win over the larger part of the customer base. Investment in DTMF IVR has often been overlooked in favour of hotter solutions, and the gradual but definite movement from telephony self-service to web-based self-service has seemed inexorable. Furthermore, businesses attempts to offer more service channels for customers web self-service, mobile apps, complex telephony options tend to create more customer frustration, as the usual independence of each channel means that customers have to repeat themselves when they do reach an agent. The advent of Visual IVR promises to change this. The addition of new functionality and the ability to offer this consistently across multiple channels will move IVR to the next generation and provide a shot in the arm for a faithful but unloved solution. Giving existing IVR functionality a visual interface simply means that the IVR s path can be shown graphically on a website or smartphone, with callers touching the selection that they require without having to listen to all of the options. This has the dual benefit for the customer of being far quicker than listening to IVR menu options, and of being significantly more likely to get them the correct information or to be routed to the department most appropriate to their needs. The rapid and ubiquitous uptake of smartphone technology will drive a successful uptake of Visual IVR: over half of calls handled by UK contact centres are from mobile phones, and 56% of British adults have a smartphone 3. With it being far quicker to read text than to listen to it being spoken - some studies show that a caller can navigate a Visual IVR menu five or six times faster than a DTMF IVR menu - the customer experience is improved without sacrificing functionality or options. 1 Research led by Liel Leibovitz, New York University Assistant Professor of Communications, commissioned by Interactions Corporation, The UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers Guide, 2014, ContactBabel 3 Cost and Value of Communications Services in the UK, Ofcom, reported - January

3 Some of the operational challenges that contact centres face - especially in larger operations - which Visual IVR can alleviate include: Persistently high levels of call transfers Time unnecessarily spent taking callers through manual identity verification and authentication The zero-out rate, where customers mutiny, and simply refuse to use the IVR system, pressing zero until they get to speak to an agent The long-winded, often circuitous nature of many companies IVR menus: IVR hell. Visual IVR provides companies with a non-invasive method of reducing unnecessary and misrouted calls, increasing levels of self-service and improving the customer experience. Call Transfers On average, more than 10% of calls received by large contact centres are transferred to other agents, despite the widespread prevalence of DTMF IVR as an aid to accurate routing. Industry-wide, this equates to around 589m call transfers per year. Of course, it will never be possible to eradicate call transfers entirely - multiple and complex queries may often require differently skilled and qualified agents to handle each part of the call - but there is considerable scope for improvement in most contact centres. Visual IVR promotes the reduction in call transfer rate through offering the customer a larger number of options from which to choose, as it is far quicker to read text than to listen to speech. It is also easier for the customer to navigate through multiple layers, and to go back a step if required. This allows more granular routing and self-service options to be made available, increasing the likelihood of accurate first-time routing or even avoiding the call altogether. 3

4 Identity Verification With the average time taken to identify and verify a caller s identity manually being 28 seconds, major opportunity exists for the contact centre industry to save billions of pounds each year. Identity verification and authentication of some type is carried out on 64% of inbound calls, and while there are some instances where DTMF IVR or speech recognition is used for initial verification, agent input is present in 99% of cases. In complex, service-driven environments, identity verification can take up to a minute, representing a very significant proportion of overall call costs. In some cases, the customer s query may be so simple that it could have been handled in a self-service session if the customer had been given the option. With Visual IVR, authenticating a caller s identity has the speed and familiarity associated with logging into a website, as it s easier and more accurate to type in usernames and passwords on a screen, rather than try to use speech recognition, which many customers do not like. The use of Visual IVR also makes it far easier to offer the customer a functionally-rich self-service interaction while waiting in the queue. The caller s authentication choices are then visible to the agent, making the identification process much shorter if not completely eliminated. IVR Hell The audio-only nature of DTMF IVR places limitations upon how user-friendly the experience can be for a customer. There has always been a trade-off required between functionality and usability, which manifests itself in the number of menu options and levels that are made available within the IVR system. Often - especially in larger operations - the business would like to have more options made available, but for the customer, there are usually already too many. 30% of businesses that use IVR offer more than 10 options to their customers. As might be expected, this is particularly the case in large contact centres: operations with 200+ seats make an average of 13 options available 4

5 in the IVR menu, compared to 10 options for the seat sector, and only 7 for sub-50 seat contact centres. Visual IVR offers businesses the chance to propose every meaningful routing option to the customer. This does not just mean that more accurate routing is possible, but also faster navigation to the right agent: a typical customer journey in Visual IVR takes an average of 6 seconds, as opposed to the DTMF IVR s average of 40 seconds. Furthermore, if the customer is placed in a queue, Visual IVR can be used to send video presentations for educational or marketing purposes, to offer a self-service solution (for example, pushing a relevant video clip in order to show the caller how to do something), or to gather information necessary to the remainder of the interaction, in order to cut call lengths. Zero-Out Rate Zeroing-out is a descriptive term for abandoning an IVR session, conjuring up a mental image of an irate customer furiously hammering the zero key on the telephone keypad to try to escape from the IVR menu and speak to an agent. With 1 in 6 calls to large contact centres reported to be zeroed-out, there are very significant number of calls that are not benefiting from having the correct routing strategies applied to them, or which are handled unnecessarily by a live agent rather than through a self-service solution. Visual IVR can reduce the zero-out rate through providing the routing options more quickly to the caller, as well as making forward or backward navigation far easier than through traditional means. Seeing is easier than listening and thus, the customer is more likely to select the right option for him and get routed to the right agent, instead of zeroing- out due to frustration caused by listening to confusing phone menus. For more about the uses of Visual IVR, click here. 5

6 Managing Perceptions Of The Queue A ContactBabel survey 4, exploring why the UK public dislikes queuing to speak to a contact centre agent, yet are legendarily happy to queue for almost everything else, found that 61% of the public absolutely hate not knowing how much longer they will be waiting the no.1 answer - although almost every reason given for disliking queuing was enthusiastically seized upon by respondents to the survey. In fact, Visual IVR can alleviate all of the five reasons given for disliking contact centre queues. Figure 1: Reasons given for dislike of contact centre queuing Reason for disliking queue Average score from 10 where 10 is extremely frustrating % scoring this at a maximum 10 Not knowing how much longer you'll have to wait % Repetitive announcements % Having to restate account information already given earlier in the call % Can't do anything else in the meantime % The music you have to listen to % The queuing system in a shop allows a customer to see how many people are ahead of them, and to estimate their own wait time. This makes queuing psychologically easier for the customer, even if the actual waiting time is significantly longer than it would be in a contact centre queue. The phenomenon of 'Dentist-Chair Time' - time which seems to stretch out to infinity - is very much present in the contact centre world. Historic statistics from thousands of UK contact centres consistently indicate that an average wait time is around seconds. However, when the British public was asked to estimate the time they usually spend waiting to speak to a contact centre, the average answer was 11½ minutes - 27 times longer than the reality. Visual IVR can show the estimated wait time (even at a product support or agent group level), presenting customers with various options, such as remaining on hold, being called back when it is their turn, or even initiating a web chat session if a multichannel agent is available. Visual IVR can also be used to encourage the use of self-service rather than a live agent, gathering complex information about the caller and their requirements which can trigger suggested solutions by displaying links or pushing relevant videos to the customer while their place is held in the queue. 4 Your call is important to us Why does the British love of queuing not extend to contact centres? - Available from without charge. Original research carried out on behalf of Vicorp. 6

7 For more about customer perceptions of IVR, click here. Customer Experience Improvement Beyond being able to alleviate most of the long-standing dislikes that customers have about contact centre queues, Visual IVR is able to provide richer functionality in order to improve the customer experience further: Integrated escalation - providing the agent with the history and context of the customer s journey to date will shorten interaction times, increase the agent s understanding of the customer s position and improve the overall quality of contact. Visual IVR also means that the entry and amendment of alphanumeric data - vital for form filling - is far easier Visual IVR offers the opportunity to provide consistency of experience across channels by offering the same self-service and routing functionality to customers regardless of the device or medium that they choose. It should also mean that repeating information already provided earlier in the call is a thing of the past Deeper functionality - such as links to knowledge bases, the delivery of related information while in the queue, the collection of complex and relevant information about the customer to resolve the query more quickly - means that there are more opportunities for businesses to be clever and innovative in their service to customers. For example, in cases where very specific expertise is required, Visual IVR can be used to help the caller self-diagnose where in the organisation they need to be going, rather than having to speak to a front-line agent to get the same information and then wait to be transferred Visual IVR also represents an enormous opportunity for hearing-impaired customers to be able to access far more functionality than was previously the case: in 2011, it was estimated that 10 million people within the UK had some form of hearing impairment, with 800,000 of these being severely or profoundly deaf 5 As Visual IVR collects information from every point of the customer s interaction, analysis can show how well self-service processes are working, where customers are abandoning the interaction, and how much time they are spending at each step, providing the business with useful insight into the customer journey

8 How Does Visual IVR Work? As Visual IVR is about making existing functionality easier to use for customers, implementation does not require wholesale changes to systems, nor is it rip and replace. Visual IVR menu systems integrate with existing DTMF structures and reuse the same VoiceXML scripts, meaning that any changes made to the existing DTMF IVR system will be automatically replicated regardless of channel or device. It can render as HTML4 or HTML5 for display on smartphone browsers, automatically selecting the correct language depending on the user s browser. Visual IVR can also be embedded in existing websites using JavaScript. This ease of deployment puts Visual IVR at a considerable advantage to competitive next-generation self-service and routing applications such as automated speech recognition, which requires significant amounts of implementation and support from IT resources, often with upfront investment and/or ongoing fees. Changes to call flows and improvements in the customer journey do not require dedicated IT resources, as integration to the back-end systems is done through a drag-and-drop wizard, with the look and feel of the Visual IVR application being done through a workflow designer tool which is able to add new functionality as well as mapping existing workflows. For more about the technical aspects of Visual IVR, click here. 8

9 Return On Investment Opportunities Payback from Visual IVR solutions is likely within a few months. Depending on the nature of the business, certain areas may yield higher returns: Typically, being able to automate identity verification and authentication processes saves around 40p per call, without negatively affecting the customer experience The average cost of an inbound call tends to be around the 4 mark. Call avoidance through an increased use of self-service, encouraged by the user-friendly nature of Visual IVR, can potentially save very significant amounts, especially in high-volume environments With the typical length of the time taken to transfer a call being between 30 and 60 seconds (which does not include the very real possibility of the second agent having to check the identity of the caller once again), a reduction in call transfer rates can immediately be quantified as a significant cost saving, especially in larger contact centres Visual IVR can collect information from the customer before it is passed to the agent, as alphanumeric input is far easier. Customers won t have to repeat information, and handle times can be reduced Typically, Visual IVR will be around 10% of the cost of automated speech recognition, which can be seen as a competitive technology, in that it too is attempting to deepen self-service functionality and improve routing. For more about calculating the ROI of Visual IVR, click here. Who s Visual IVR Best For? As Visual IVR solutions are implemented on top of existing IVR platforms, the typical businesses that will benefit from this next-generation functionality will be those who are already major users of DTMF IVR: Larger inbound contact centres (typically over 100 seats, although smaller businesses with significant volumes of automated self-service will also find this useful) Those with lots of departments, products or services to support via different agent groups Operations that provide customer access to back-office systems for standard transactional queries, such as account balance, order status, etc. Visual IVR can also be implemented and run in parallel to traditional IVR and web customer interaction channels, helping transition customers gradually towards the adoption of Visual IVR. 9

10 Visual IVR: A True Win-Win For Businesses And Customers Visual IVR provides a low-impact, high-return upgrade on existing, familiar functionality. The rapidly increasing appetite for mobile data and smartphones is unstoppable, encouraging businesses to be creative with how they offer customers the chance to communicate with them. Figure 2: Visual IVR: benefits for businesses and customers Business Customer Cost reduction through improved call avoidance and more accurate routing, improving first contact resolution and decreasing call transfer rates Leverage existing IVR investments, without having to rip and replace Reusability of existing scripts lowers development costs Greater granularity of routing, and improved functionality means that callers are more likely to arrive at the place where they need to be, or to be able to solve their query themselves through selfservice. Significant decrease in customer effort to access self-service or call routing capabilities If the agent has contextual information, there is less likelihood of the caller having to repeat information Contextual information gathered within the Visual IVR session can be popped to agents, giving an improved understanding of the customer s journey, reducing agent handle time and customer frustration As more customers are finding the correct information without having to call the contact centre, this means lower wait times for the customer base in general In summary: The opportunity to reuse and extend existing routing and self-service capabilities without major IT investments is a win for the business. Being able to take control of how and when they interact with businesses, alleviating the common pain points of traditional IVR functionality, is a win for customers. Taking unloved but useful functionality and being able to extend its power while removing the negative experiences around it, is a true win-win for businesses and customers. 10

11 About ContactBabel ContactBabel provides top-quality research and analysis of the contact centre industry. We help solution providers market directly to their prospects and communicate their message more clearly. We provide accurate and extensive research for contact centres looking to understand technology and to benchmark themselves against their competitors. If you have a question about the contact centre industry and where it's heading, we can probably help you. info@contactbabel.com Website: Telephone: +44 (0) About Jacada Jacada solutions help organizations improve their customer experiences and reduce their operational costs. Jacada enables organizations to deliver advanced customer and agent interactions by implementing cutting edge mobile customer service and visual IVR solutions, agent desktops, and process optimization tools. Customers can benefit from an improved customer service experience at every touch point with the organization, whether at the call center, on the mobile, or at the retail store. Jacada projects often deploy in less than six months, and customers often realize a complete return on investment within 12 months of deployment. Founded in 1990, Jacada operates globally with offices in Atlanta, USA; London, England; Munich, Germany; and Herzliya, Israel. More information is available at 11