• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
IVR Technology Group

IVR Technology Group

Delight Customers. Reduce Costs. Increase Efficiency

  • IVR payments
  • text payments
  • products
    • Automation Platform:
      Roll your own voice & text applications
    • Payments Suite:
      IVR payments by phone, text & chat
    • Broadcast Suite:
      Automated alerts by voice, text & email
    • White Glove IVR:
      We can help decrease agent call volume
    • Automation Solutions:
      More CS automation solutions.
  • about
    • About Us
    • FAQ’s
    • Security First
    • Careers
    • Partner With Us
    • Our Valued Partners
  • contact
  • blog
PCI DSS Certified Level-1 Service Provider

IVR Surveys By Phone: What You Need To Know

We’ll help you understand why IVR surveys by phone are the most efficient and cost-effective way to collect customer feedback and market research. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) enables automated communications with survey respondents over the phone. They can engage with the survey with their phone’s keypad or through voice recognition. With a speech-to-text integration, even open-ended responses are possible. We’ll walk you through some of the basics of what is the IVR meaning, basic survey considerings, and even more advanced ideas such as skip logic. But first, here are some hand statistics on why you should be considering IVR surveys by phone:

40% the time spent commissioning market research is spent on crafting an effective survey.It takes an average of 6 to 7 weeks to collect adequate responses for a typical market research effort.Using the phone or speaking in person is 60% more effective than using email to collect responses.Distributing surveys through the mail costs about $7,000 for every 200 responses.Using live agents to conduct surveys by phone costs up to $15,000 for every 200 responses.

IVR Voice Surveys Are:

Statistically Significant Data: Proven higher response rates allow you to identify negative and positive trends
Immediate Feedback: Quickly identify problem areas, making positive and impactful changes possible
Automated Administration: Eliminates interviewer bias, allowing you to collect more meaningful & honest data
Immediate Alerts: For negative responses via SMS, e-mail, fax, or instant message. Make quick & impactful changes
Multiple Languages: Available to increase the number of potential respondents
Comprehensive Reporting: Tools simplify the data analysis process

Starting Out With Voice Surveys

Most customer satisfaction or market research surveys begin in the written form intended for either paper or web delivery. This format typically won’t work well in an interactive voice survey. Your participants will need both brief instructions and engaging flow to ensure accurate responses. Here a few examples of what to consider:

Intro

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey, it will take no more than a minute and a half of your time. We value your opinion.
This survey will be used by “Your Company Name” to improve your customer service experience.
This survey will ensure your anonymity and strictest confidence. Please listen to the entire question before responding.

Instructions

By pressing the numbers on your telephone keypad, please rate on a scale of 1 to 5. Where one is poor, and five is excellent, for your satisfaction with “Your Company Name” on the following aspects of the call.
If you’d like to have the question repeated, Press 9. If you’d like to repeat the instructions, Press 0.

Questions

Q1 How easy is it to contact us?
Q2 How well did our representative address your concerns?
Q3 How professional was our representative (or title)?
Q4 How knowledgeable was our representative (or title)?

Language

In many cases, you’ll need to consider a multilingual survey. If you don’t have your source of translation, your IVR survey provider will have a reference. Be sure to sign off on the English (or other originating languages) version of your survey before sending it out for translation.

Timing

Read your script out loud to others on your team. Have your team act-out responses to the questions. Even have them simulate repeating the question or instructions.

Clients often ask us, “Is there an ideal survey length to maximize the completion rate?” In our experience, there is no such thing as an “ideal” call length. But as a rule-of-thumb, the shorter it is, the higher the completion rate. But even that all depends on how well you can answer these critical questions to the participant:

  • Why am I doing this survey?
  • I’m busy, how long is this going to take?
  • What are you doing with the information?
  • Is my participation confidential?

And of course, “what is there in it for me?” We generally don’t encourage reward based participation for customer satisfaction surveys. However, for market research surveys, incentives may encourage participants to stay engaged.

Voice Talent

Your voice talent is a crucial consideration. Reading a survey script requires a different pace and tone than that for broadcast or IVR prompts. You need someone who knows how to make the survey flow engaging, simple, and enjoyable. Your IVR survey vendor will certainly have options for you to review. Or, if you have your own “voice of the brand” talent, have them spend some time with your vendor to understand the nuances of voice surveys.

Skip Logic

Skip logic is a function of IVR surveys that permits respondents to skip to a specific question. The logic depends on how a participant answers a previous question. It is essential that you make a note of this, as your IVR service provider will want to know this in advance. It impacts the effort involved, and each option will need testing. Here is an example of a post-call customer satisfaction survey that demonstrates this useful function:

The follow-up questions would be:

Open-Ended Questions

Your survey may require the caller to provide an answer to an open-ended question. For example, you may ask:
“After the tone, please state why you have selected this overall satisfaction rating choice. Please complete your answer by pressing the pound or hash key.”

Modern IVR survey systems will have the option to convert the responses from recorded speech to text, along with supporting WAV files. In many cases, the text may be provided as CSV files for import into a spreadsheet or database for more analysis.

Your Data

When you engage the services of an IVR service provider or your in-house resource, they will ask you, “How do you want your data fields named and in what order?” Formatting is especially crucial if you already have a pre-defined format on a data analysis tool.

If you are working from scratch, don’t worry, a full-service IVR service provider would be able to provide you with some useful guidelines and take you through the process.

There are several options to deliver your survey data to you:

FTP/Portal: This basic import tool allows you to log-on to a portal or FTP site, and import all your survey results as a digital file directly to your computer. This method is simple and will require no IT resources at your end. Since you have already agreed on the database format, you will be able to import this file directly into your data analysis tool.

Real-time Data Exchange: This method allows an IVR service providers’ platform to connect with your Internet-enabled database. It is more sophisticated and will be especially useful if you are:

  • conducting a concurrent web survey
  • delivering results to your clients (internal or external) in real-time
  • validating participants in real-time against your in-house web-enabled database
  • managing any part of the call logic from an in-house application.

We also recommend this method for ongoing surveys. This method is traditionally implemented as an HTTP/Post XML transaction, initiated by the IVR, and posted to your web server. Your IVR service provider can discuss the various options to implement this, which will reduce the time that your IT staff will need to invest in the development process.

Conclusion

We hope this basic introduction to IVR voice surveys helped demystify the subject and give you a starting point. If you’d like to get in touch with us to learn more, contact us, and one of survey experts will get in touch soon.

Surveys home

Primary Sidebar

Follow us on LinkedIn for all our latest posts.

How Outbound Surveys Improve Customer Experiences

Get Rapid Customer Feedback With IVR Surveys & Qualtrics

Case Study: Growing A Bank Through UCaaS & CCaaS Integration

The #1 Reason To Choose A Contact Center as a Service

Customer Story: Building World-Class CX With IVR Voice Surveys

This is what an IVR can do.

What is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?

Reduce Contact Center Costs With an IVR System

How IVR Systems Help Reduce Contact Center Agent Turnover

SMS Text Messaging Tactics For Black Friday Success

Footer


circle-twitter
circle-linkedin
circle-facebook
circle-mail
circle-phone
IVR Technology Group
HEADQUARTERS
  65 Lawrence Bell Drive, Suite 102
  Amherst, New York 14221
  1-716-250-2800
DALLAS SALES OFFICE
  1090 Texan Trail
  Grapevine, TX 76051
  1-972-846-4100
Client Login
SiteMap
Press
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
compliance

© 2021 · IVR Technology Group, LLC · all rights reserved