Insights Blog

Invest Wisely: Know the Business Value of your IVR

As an executive responsible for the performance of your contact center, there is a lot riding on your decisions.  The contact center investments you choose to fund have material impact on your P&L, the risk profile of your business, and your brand.  Prioritizing which projects to fund is a complex and challenging exercise that easily can be overrun with the opinions of all those involved in the decision.

Here’s a glimpse of some data that can help influence opinions and guide your call center investment decisions.  This new report (which we highly recommend) from Forrester Research, To Invest Wisely, Know The Business Value Of Diverse Contact Center Solutions, analyzes 18 types of contact center technologies used for customer service.

IVR is a business critical technology

Of the 18 technologies analyzed, Forrester rates four as business critical:

• Quality Mentoring
• Case Management
• IVR
• Knowledge Management

According to the report, solutions that focus on improving productivity are the most certain to add business value.

IVR is a powerful tool that is often misused 

The report also noted that of the four business critical technologies identified, all of them have a positive reputation – except IVR.  IVR has a mixed reputation, which is no surprise.  While IVR is known to be a safe bet in improving productivity, it is routinely ranked lowest in customer satisfaction.

This is unfortunate, because in our view the IVR is a powerful tool that is often misused.  Too many enterprises have kept poorly performing IVR systems in service for years.  Worse yet, many executives have given up on investing in their IVR systems because they mistakenly believe that they’re as good as they’re ever going to get and their IVR performance can’t be improved.

Don’t be afraid to go for the gold

Don’t fall into this trap.  As you consider your investment options, challenge the status quo.  If IVR is a critical technology that handles a large number of customer transactions in your contact center, it has too much of an impact to ignore.  Investments in IVR performance improvements can generate a fabulous ROI, but only if you demand more than just “acceptable” performance.  You have to be willing to go for the gold.

Which technology in your contact center do you consider to be the most neglected?

Tags: call center, contact center, customer satisfaction, Forrester Research, investment decisions, ivr systems