The Impact Of Self-Service IVR On Contact Centers

Optimizing a contact center workforce can be like solving the world’s most challenging puzzle. Since it tends to be an art and science, it isn’t a perfect process. One of the outcomes of handling every call with a live agent is a slower speed to answer. One of our larger clients believed strongly in live agents taking every call until 2018. That’s when we jumped in to help them implement an after-hours self-service option for their contact center. They realized the self-service option was less than 1/15th of the cost of having agents handle the calls. Automation was a massive bonus as they already had challenges staffing agents who weren’t interested in working late hours. Because of this, they began looking at other areas of their contact center. Today, they answer every call in 3 seconds and provide most of their customers with self-serve options. With a vastly improved customer experience, our client is amazed that more than 47% of their customers now choose self-service rather than speak to an agent. They want a faster speed to answer and quicker service.

Staffing a contact center appropriately is an art and science. Many contact centers invest millions of dollars in Workforce Management software helping them effectively and efficiently staff to handle high call, text, email, and chat volumes. Automated self-service seamlessly scales with peaks in volume. The more a contact center leverages automation, the more they can reduce their seasonal or other peak volume costs. The “costs” are often more than just hard bottom-line dollars. High-volume periods can increase hold time, handling time, and poor customer experiences. Self-service automation can handle the basic requests of customers, freeing agents to address more complex customer issues.

Let’s face it; we are talkers. People like communicating with people. With high value, high touch requirements, it’s essential to provide callers concierge service from a contact center agent. However, it’s not uncommon for contact center leaders to find that not all callers require a high touch. And, in many cases, these calls have a longer call handling time than as opposed to using an IVR with communication automation. Our client saved over $420,000 annually by moving one application to an IVR from contact center agents. As a result, the contact center was thankful since those calls were high volume yet did not require high touch service.

Especially since COVID, consumers are more aware of remote contact center agents working from their homes. We’re also mindful that many remote agents have roommates, live in apartments, and are not operating in a secure environment while asking for our payment information. Pay by Phone IVR services make it simple, easy, and more secure for callers to pay their bills. Pay by Text and SMS Payment Reminders have also become the standard for many organizations reminding consumers of an upcoming payment and allowing them to pay it via phone or text.

We’ve outlined how self-service automation can significantly reduce the cost of customer service operations that rely on outsourced (often off-shore) contact centers. Containing low-value caller interactions in self-service automation enables a powerful layer of control; you decide which calls go to your contact center. Self-service automation can easily accommodate account information lookups, status inquiries, scheduling, account activation, IVR surveys, outbound notifications, employee updates, prescription refills, policy renewals, and much more. The result is improved caller experiences through swift resolution and reduced contact center costs. It’s a win-win.