Visual IVR is increasingly popular with companies striving to deliver outstanding customer service. In most cases, it is presented as an additional support option for customers who prefer to solve their own problems or who wish to avoid a wait for a live agent.
Companies and customers enjoy the many benefits of Visual IVR. Here’s a summary of the most critical factors that are driving adoption.
Enhancing Customer Experience
A large and growing portion of customers prefer self-service options to agent-assisted support. Others choose self-service because they place a premium on faster issue resolution and prefer immediate access to digital self-service alternatives versus waiting for an agent. Most companies implementing Visual IVR see immediate improvements in CSAT and other customer service performance metrics.
Reducing Call Center Costs
Visual IVR reduces call volumes and handling times by enhancing opportunities for customer self-service. Visual IVR experiences are a low-cost alternative to live agent support, where costs average $1 per minute. When even a simple issue can take several minutes to resolve, it’s easy to see how diverting a percentage of these calls to digital self-service makes economic sense.
Lessening Contact Center Recruiting Challenges
In light of the “Great Resignation,” many call centers report difficulty finding enough agents to support customers. Visual IVR can significantly reduce the number of live calls that reach your contact center, reducing demand for new agents. Further, by diverting many unnecessary calls, Visual IVR can lessen the pressure agents experience from too many calls, contributing to increased employee retention.
Always-On Servicing
Many companies don’t have the resources to invest in 24-7 support. Instead, they focus on working hours in a particular region and perhaps extended hours that incorporate the early morning or evening. While these compromises may have been acceptable to customers in the past, people increasingly expect to have service available whenever they want it. Visual IVR can give customers self-service options during hours when contact centers are not operating, enabling these consumers to resolve their issues faster and on their terms.
Expediting Issue Resolution
Visual IVR generally improves first contact resolution because simple self-service experiences make it easy to get desired information and outcomes. It may seem counterintuitive, but well-designed digital self-service experiences often drive higher FCR than agent-assisted support calls.
Increasing Overall Digital Adoption
Companies generally prefer when customers choose digital processes. Digital assets were often developed specifically to help customers avoid on-premise and phone-based interactions. Data suggest that when we divert a call to digital self-service, we condition customers to seek out digital experience alternatives for more of their interactions with a company as needs arise in the future.
Increase Sales Conversion
Many companies report increasing conversion rates for inbound sales when they offer digital self-service options. Callers may get the information they want more quickly, and visual experiences are often easier for customers to understand than voice-only interactions. When a sale requires a customer signature, collecting that immediately in an e-signature field of a digital self-service interaction drives higher completion rates than having sellers email docs or links after a call.
—
With so many potential benefits, it’s easy to see why so many companies are implementing Visual IVR. If you want to learn more about Visual IVR or Callvu, please visit our website, request a demo, or explore the content we have developed on this important topic. Many of the most popular articles are highlighted below.