Deploying and maintaining a CRM system is a big deal, especially when you consider the surrounding business processes and employee effort necessary to make CRM a business success. Without proof of success, executive support for the CRM initiative will wane, participation and progress will slow down, and success will be increasingly difficult to achieve.
As you endeavor to create a holistic view of your customer interactions, are you, like many enterprises, forgetting to include detailed interaction data from one of the highest-volume customer interaction points in the company?
IVR performance will have a major influence on your ability to achieve CRM objectives
Your IVR may be the initial “trigger experience” for millions of customer interactions a year. And inevitably, your IVR performance will have a major influence on your ability to achieve your CRM objectives:
- Do you have the right IVR metrics in place to support your CRM objectives?
- Do you actively monitor those IVR metrics to an actionable level of detail?
- Do you have a continuous improvement process (and staff) in place to keep raising the bar on IVR performance?
Is your IVR holding you back?
We suggest the following best practice IVR metrics to help you make sure your IVR is making a positive contribution to CRM success:
- Self-Service Utilization Rate. Most enterprises have a general idea what their IVR automation rate is, but surprisingly few actually track it diligently and systematically improve it.
- Goal Completion Rate. Some enterprises look at exit points (the point in the call flow where callers leave the IVR) but very few actually determine what the caller’s goal was and measure how many callers were successful in reaching their goal.
- Caller Effort. It’s good if your callers succeed in reaching their intended goal, but how much effort did it take them to get there? Did they struggle or glide effortlessly toward their goal
- Personalization Rate. According to a recent Contact Solutions survey, 93% of consumers want a more personalized experience when interacting with a vendor. Are you successfully able to personalize IVR calls based on CRM data, customer preferences, and real time caller behavior?
- Customer Experience Rating. Despite widespread collection of Voice of the Customer data, only 28% of customer experience professionals say that VOC insights systematically drive insight-based action. Is your IVR CX rating based on detailed interaction data that can provide actionable insights for your continuous improvement team?
Don’t take your IVR for granted. You might be surprised at how much better your IVR can perform if given the proper attention. With the right metrics, analytics, and continuous improvement effort, you can turn your IVR from a customer interaction black hole into an active contributor to CRM success.
