Adaptive IVR Blog

Analyst Guest Insights: Paul Stockford of Saddletree Research, Inc. shares insights about how to best maximize your contact center technology investments. For example, read more about how WFO and IVR investments can be better leveraged to improve your results.

Besides my gig at Saddletree Research, the company I founded 18 years ago, I also work under contract as research director for the university-based, not-for-profit National Association of Call Centers (NACC), which provides me a deep reach into the end-user community for research and discovery regarding industry trends, issues, concerns, purchase intentions, etc.  While the majority of the research we do at the NACC is quantitative, for our 2016 year-end study we decided to focus on qualitative information.  To get a feel for what contact center issues customer service professionals are most concerned about going into 2017, I conducted 20 interviews in December.  In a nutshell, I asked the study participants what issues are keeping them up at night when thinking about their contact center(s) in 2017.

What we discovered during these interviews were two overriding concerns for 2017. 

When have you had the opportunity to delve deeper into contact center data mining, and in particular in the customer self-service channel? This is historically a “set it and forget it” channel, which means there’s a whole source of actionable analytics that you may be missing out on.

We get it, no one can be accused of being Superman in the contact center - seeing through the data, tools and technology in the blink of the eye to the core actionable answers. That would be great, but it’s not reality.

Customer Service is no longer just about answering the phone; it’s about being responsive to voice, social media, messaging, video, email, digital web and mobile.

Addressing today’s digital consumer-centric environment is now table-stakes and your Contact Center technology has to step up and keep pace.  Working with clients struggling with outdated telecom and contact center infrastructure while others seize market advantage by embracing advanced multi-channel integrated cloud platform solutions is an eye-opening experience.  The conclusion is clear.  There’s only one-way to go.  That’s forward – and fast.

Perhaps you remember the refrain from the popular sitcom, “Cheers,” “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.” Everyone wants to be treated as an individual.   And now big companies also are trying to make you feel like someone special.  Even McDonald’s, which owes its decades of success to conformity, is testing a create-your-taste menu.

There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to your customers. Not everyone who walks into Starbucks wants the same thing. These customers expect a customized beverage based on their personal preferences, and if they don't get it, they probably will head to Dunkin' Donuts.

Customer support technology shouldn’t attempt to be one size fits all either. Customers are increasingly coming to expect more personalized service, not only from brick and mortar establishments, but from call centers and automated systems. Thanks to the skillful manipulation of data coupled with analytics, personalization is possible.

We’ve all heard the buzz about personalized IVR self-service and how it takes the cost out of contact center operations. But, it can also put revenue goals over the top as well by improving agent productivity.

You'll get more productivity out of your existing agents, and it will enable your contact center to scale up call volume without adding more agents to the mix.

In some programs, up to 98 percent of customer calls into a contact center are automated in the IVR for our customers. IVR is still highly critical to overall customer experience (CX), and may be the main source of experience with a brand.

Having access to the right data and knowing how to apply it to personalize your IVR can be the difference between winning and losing business. In today’s fast-moving, hypercompetitive world, customers want to be treated as unique individuals and expect companies they do business with to know them, and anything less is a bad experience.