Automation

Self Service transformation or the traditional IVR´s change

By 13 de octubre de 2018marzo 25th, 2021No Comments

 

Self-sufficiency is mature people pathway it starts on the basics and extends to all areas of their life. In ancient Greece self-sufficiency was known as the proper situation of wise people, those who are happy and have enough with what they have, reducing the dependency on others.

Today, as consumers and users, we want to be self-sufficient. We want to resolve our own problems, issues, queries, etc. by ourselves, without depending in others, or waiting to someone to solve it for us.

These days, we don´t have any special motivation to call a Company and talk with an agent of customer experience. We prefer to obtain answers on the company´s website instead of calling or sending an email. Besides, more and more people have a smartphones or tablets nowadays and they keep using it to navigate in the internet, and have access to a more visual and interactive content. Audiovisual and self-service aren´t only a trend when we give service to people, they are also part of our own interest and desires once we need to attend our demands.

Therefore there is no doubt that self-service and audiovisual are intrinsic part of our interests and they go beyond being just a trend to consider when understanding service demand of clients.

Until now it was mandatory to have a “multichannel” Contact Center platform. It was enough to have a “client focused” service strategy and was crucial to have an “Omni channel” system, as the only way to provide good “consumers experience”, to capture new clients and encourage loyalty. We need to go a step further if we want our business to keep growing; we have to adapt to consumers demands especially to young generations. Audiovisual self-service is key, in transforming the traditional IVR, into an IVR that combines audio and video in a new offer with a friendlier service and with a better and effective content.

It doesn´t matter if we are younger or older, nobody likes or want to hear the numerical option menu that the classic IVR offers us when we call a company´s customer care service, trying  to remember all the options , so we can then the appropriate one. We would all prefer to see them, interact in a simple and intuitive way, select the different options, go back easily and find out without any effort the option that is going to solve the reason of our call. (It´s a fact that people react better to visual signs than to audio).

However, we want to keep doing it with the same easiness regardless the point of access we use: computer or mobile phone (Gartner says that 60% of internet users would choose as the first option, to use customer service applications through mobile phones). But, we want to go further like asking a Contact Center agent to call us (Video-Call, or Tap-to-Call by mobile app), we want to schedule when to call us (Video- Callback),  we would like to ask things and have a text dialog with an agent (Video-Chat, or Instant Messaging by mobile app) and use many other audiovisual apps that can be included as extra service value of the Contact Center, transforming customer experience.

We can´t forget that navigating in an IVR facilitates audiovisual services, is at least 4 or 5 times quicker than the traditional audio menu, and eliminates one the most frustrating elements of a customer care service of a Company . When there are long waits when all the agents are busy (more than third of users hang up when they have been waiting more than 2 minutes) or when they have to repeat over and over the same information because it was not transferred from one agent to another.

In conclusion, the audiovisual self-service era has started; it is a reality and people demand it. There are some IVR´s capable of doing it in the market, but those who don´t prepare to deploy it in their Contact will offer a poor customer care service that can have damaging consequences to their business.