Selecting an IVR System for Customer Satisfaction Surveys

As more and more companies realize the critical nature of delivering exceptional customer experiences, surveying customers about their experience is a crucial CX tactic. CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys can take many forms, from an email after the product ships to an end-of-call IVR survey. Statistically, each method will have different response rates. Emailed surveys, for example, have the lowest response rate, because, well, it’s email. And for those methods that require the customer to take action on their own (like call a survey number), results can be skewed because respondents are typically unsatisfied. End-of-call surveys, with the right IVR, can deliver response rates and actionable data. Here’s what you need to look for in an IVR system for your CSAT surveys.

Data Capture and Connectivity

You need to make sure that your IVR vendor (whether custom-built or a self-serve SaaS IVR) can connect to your CRM or other databases of customer information. While it’s hard these days to find an IVR system unable to integrate with other systems, they may not be able to connect to yours.

Data connectivity gives you the ability to perform a simple end-of-call survey of yes/no or number-scale responses. In many situations, this is all you need, and the more simple you can make it, the higher your response rates.

Self-Serve Integrated Development Environment

If you need more sophisticated surveys or more than one or two surveys, look for an IVR system with an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) you can use. Ideally, this should be in the form of a “visual studio” style of IDE, where you drag-and-drop components of the call flow. Being able to create or modify your own IVR surveys will save time (and cost) and allow you to make rapid changes based on the data you collect. The most important things to look for in an IVR IDE for surveys are:

• Cloud-based – easy scalability
• Staging environment – test and refine before you go live
• Visual IVR builder – rapid development
• Close existing IVR applications – copy existing survey to start a new one
• Text-to-speech – test their available “voices”
• Audio file management – upload & manage your voice prompts
• Reports – see response rates in real-time
• Integration – make sure it connects to your data
• Outbound SMS – if you have permission, send the caller a survey as text messages

Programmatic IVR

If your survey needs to include skip-logic, different follow-up questions based on previous answers, then the IVR needs to support decision trees. Most satisfaction surveys don’t need advanced skip-logic, but if your product or service is complex, it could help with more in-depth insight into the customer experience.

Voice Transcription

Finally, if you’re going to offer open-ended questions, then you’ll need an IVR vendor who can also provide voice transcription. Automated speech-to-text can work well in most situations, and give you rapid results, but often depends on call quality for reliable results.

“What if I just want someone to do it all for me?”

While simple end-of-call surveys can be relatively easy to create and deploy, sometimes your needs might be more complicated. Do you require personalize reporting? Will you need phone numbers for in-bound or out-bound voice surveys? Maybe you need an analytics platform for long term surveys and trend analysis. With our Qualtrics integration, we can help you get there and beyond.