Managers will always try to measure every technology and application in the company. It is in this light that even telephone systems must be measured for their effectiveness and efficiency because this also has something to do with customer satisfaction. With this, many may be puzzled why IVR KPIs or Interactive Voice Response KPIs are needed on the scorecard for every technology used in a business.
Well, simply put, IVR is the true leader in the call center industry. Customers who call with concerns do not contact customer service representatives right away. They first have to plot the IVR. Many IVR systems do not address customer concerns immediately because the way they are designed does not suit their needs. What usually happens is that clients need to overcome a maze of options and become irritated even before their problems are solved. So what do you need to measure in an IVR? What are the metrics that must be included to ensure customer satisfaction?
First, analyze your purpose. Ask yourself why the IVR was placed or used. It is in this essence that you will find the reason to measure the effectiveness of the IVR. If the purpose is customer satisfaction, then you must measure customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction or CSAT is measured through surveys that are sent randomly. This means that a business should not send surveys to selected customers who appear to be satisfied with the service. This can be done in an IVR system if the company has a database of its customers’ email addresses. Once a customer calls and presses their ID numbers, the machine or computers can begin to implement the surveys.
Second, the timeliness of the IVR response must also be measured. There are some IVR systems that have delays in responses. When this happens, customers don’t get what they want. Part of this is the accuracy of the transfer. Many IVR systems divert calls. For example, a customer may be looking for a specialist in the account balance department, but they are transferred to the billing department.
Another topic that should be part of the metric is ease of use. It is unfortunate that many people abandon calls even before selecting an option because the IVR system is considered difficult to use. Ideally, IVR systems should only have five or six general menus. These menus can be divided into four or five other submenus and so on.
Finally, the availability of data must be measured. This has something to do with the resolution rate. It makes no sense to give customers the option to find their balances if the account’s IVR systems are always down. This metric can be divided into resolution rate and IVR system availability rate. The resolution rate is, of course, equal to the number of resolved calls divided by the total number of calls.
To measure the IVR KPI effectively, the metrics must be well defined. Also, metrics should have a financial impact, or else it is practically useless to measure something that does not impact the financial health of the company.