Managers will always try to measure each of the technologies and applications that are in the company. It is in this light that even phone systems must be measured for 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 Key Performance Indicators are needed on the scorecard for every technology used in a company.
Well, in a nutshell, IVR is the real front line of the call center industry. Customers who call with concerns do not reach customer service representatives immediately. First they have to map the IVR. Many IVR systems don’t address customer concerns right away because the way they’re designed doesn’t fit what customers need. What usually happens is that customers need to get through a maze of options and they get irritated even before their problems are resolved. So what needs to be measured in an IVR? What are the metrics that need to be involved 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 IVR. If the purpose is customer satisfaction, then you need to measure customer satisfaction. Customer Satisfaction or CSAT is measured through surveys that are sent randomly. This means that a company 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 business has a database of its customers’ email addresses. Once a customer calls and presses their identification numbers, the machine or computers can begin to implement the surveys.
Second, the IVR response timeliness must also be measured. There are some IVR systems that are delayed in responses. When this happens, customers don’t get what they want. Part of this is the accuracy of the transfer. Many IVR systems forward calls. For example, a client may be looking for a specialist in the account balance department, but is transferred to the billing department.
Another topic that should be part of the metric is ease of use. It is unfortunate that many people drop calls before even 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 broken down into another four or five 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 an option to find their balances if the account’s IVR systems are always down. This metric can be broken down into resolution rate and availability rate of the IVR system. 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 need to be well defined. Furthermore, the metrics must have a financial impact, or else it is practically useless to measure something that does not impact the financial state of the business.
