What is
conversational IVR,
and how
can it benefit
your organization?

Organizations understand customer frustration can grow if they feel they can't get solutions to their problems quickly and efficiently. A traditional way to help steer customers to the right people and resources has been to deploy interactive voice response (IVR) systems.

Now conversational IVR (CIVR) offers the opportunity to improve this process by delivering faster, more intuitive customer service while also giving busy agents a break. Here's what business leaders need to know about IVR and CIVR, and how they can use CIVR to improve the customer experience.

Interactive voice response, or IVR, is an automated business phone system technology. When a customer calls a customer service line that uses IVR, they hear a prerecorded message that introduces a menu of options for directing their call. From there, the customer can select the most appropriate option using their telephone's keypad. Since IVR systems are so ubiquitous today, nearly everyone who has called a customer service line has interacted with an IVR.

Although a well-designed IVR can quickly funnel customers to the agents who are best able to help them, sometimes IVR contact center menus come across as inflexible and lacking personal warmth. When a customer can't find the right touch-tone menu option for their call, they may become lost in a complicated, unhelpful menu tree. Faced with a dead end, they may want to talk to a fellow human who they believe can better understand their needs and more efficiently assist them.

If the customer can't easily find the right selection for speaking directly with a customer service representative or if they have to endure a lengthy hold time due to high call volume, they may become frustrated. At that point, the caller may perceive that the business doesn't put customers' needs first. Rather than waste any more time, the customer may abandon the call and start looking for a competitor who can give them the customer experience they seek.

Conversational IVR, or CIVR, leverages the combined power of speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the customer pain points associated with traditional IVR systems. When a customer calls a customer support line that uses CIVR, they can simply say what they're calling about in their own words instead of waiting until a prerecorded message reads out a lengthy menu of options and instructs them on which number to tap for each issue. The CIVR system then uses advanced speech recognition and natural language understanding to interpret what the customer said, determine their intent and guide them to the appropriate resource.

AI enables the CIVR solution to become better at interpreting caller intent over time, improving the use of the automated system and reducing the need for live agents. Unlike the IVR contact center approach, which can only handle simple commands and doesn't allow for a personalized customer experience, CIVR can be configured to match phone numbers with customer data, identify callers and provide a personal touch that puts customers at ease.

Given that 43% of people say they prefer to use voice to reach customer service, conversational IVR is better positioned to meet customer expectations than IVR. CIVR also aligns with recent digital transformation trends toward a more conversational experience. According to Drift's 2021 State of Conversational Marketing report, 58% of respondents adopted a conversational marketing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost all respondents (99%) perceived their conversational marketing solution as valuable to highly valuable, with 62% finding it highly valuable.

CIVR can improve a company's IVR contact center in several ways:

• CIVR's intuitive call steering routes callers to the right place the first time, improving first-call resolution and overall contact center efficiency.
• Businesses can use CIVR's enhanced routing to lower agent call volumes, reduce their costs per transaction and improve their average handle times.
• By tapping AI-enabled CIVR, companies can better support their customers while allowing live agents to focus on issues that require a human touch. This way, rather than struggling to process volumes of straightforward calls that could be more efficiently resolved with the right self-service tools, human agents can devote their talent and expertise to solving more complex, nuanced problems.
• CIVR also offers operational and customer analytics insights that can help businesses continually optimize their contact center processes and improve the customer experience, maximizing their overall return on investment.