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Voice Self-Service is Key to Achieving Enterprises and Contact Center 2010 Goals
How IVR can play a role in touch-point management
Ms. Donna Fluss
President, DMG Consulting LLC
G-CEM International Partner (US)
www.dmgconsult.com
This article is exclusively written for G-CEM.
A Q3 2009 survey asked 107 enterprise, contact center and IT executives and decision-makers from around the globe to identify their top goals and priorities for 2010. Surprisingly voice self-service solutions (also known as interactive voice response systems or IVRs) are expected to play a key role in helping enterprises of all sizes achieve their 2010 objectives.
The top 2010 goal for enterprise and contact center executives is improving customer service. The second most important goal for enterprise executives is cutting operating costs; this is similar to the number two goal for contact center leaders, which is to improve productivity. See Figure 1. Companies where contact center VPs and leaders have aligned their top goals with those of the executive suite are much more likely to succeed in retaining and enhancing customer relationships.
The DMG benchmark study shows that IT has its own priorities; IT?s top goals for 2010 are to meet the needs of business customers and to keep the enterprise?s technology and applications running at optimal levels. This shows that IT organizations are entering 2010 with a strong appreciation of the need to support their business clients? goals and objectives. It?s disappointing that IT does not make an effort to understand their customers? goals, as this would help organizations to meet them better on an ongoing basis. This goal misalignment is the primary reason for the lack of trust between IT and contact centers.
IVR to the Rescue
An astounding 28.1% of companies not currently using IVR systems are in the process of looking for a voice self-service solution to help them meet their goals. See Figure 2. The recession has pushed companies that were previously hesitant to use voice self-service automation to make investments in these solutions. An IVR initiative that is planned, designed and rolled out properly can reduce the volume of calls to live agents by 20% to 90% (over time), depending upon the purpose of the contact center and the tasks programmed into the solution. The trend toward increased adoption of IVR is expected to continue even after the economy recovers. The benefits and cost savings from a well-designed IVR implementation generally convince even the most reluctant managers that these solutions are effective both for their customers and their cost structure.
Figure 3 shows the primary drivers for current and prospective voice self-service users who are considering investments in hosted/managed service IVRs. Two obvious reasons why prospective users are seriously considering hosted IVR solutions are to avoid capital expense and minimize start-up costs, not surprising during tough economic times. A less obvious reason for looking into hosting is to acquire the expertise along with the solution.
Figure 4 identifies top IVR users by function for current and prospective users. Customer service and sales contact centers are the top users of IVR, representing 93.5% and 47.8% of current users, and 85.7% and 28.6% of prospective users, respectively.
Figure 4 shows that a wide variety of contact centers are using IVR. While the majority of these contact centers support external customers, such as customer service, sales, fraud and collections, IVR is also used to facilitate the handling of internal customers for benefits, human resources and internal help desk activities. DMG expects to see more internal uses of voice self-service applications over the next few years, particularly now that companies can provision highly scalable IVR solutions from hosted and managed service providers that allow them to pay only for what they use.
Prospective IVR users can benefit from the proven technical, business and scripting/VUI expertise available in the market to assist them in designing and implementing their applications cost effectively. To simplify their efforts, prospects should seek out IVR vendors with proven experience in creating applications, scripts and VUIs for their particular vertical. (Prospects should also ask for references and check them out before making a final selection.) An advantage to being a late adopter of a technology is that an organization can benefit from all of the experience that has already been accumulated.
33% of organizations planning their first IVR investment are now considering using a hosted/managed service provider. (This is compared to the 20% who are looking into a licensed application.) The three primary reasons for the interest in this service delivery model appear to be hosted/managed service providers? flexibility and willingness to work with companies large and small; the availability of out-of-box applications (particularly on the outbound side); and the hosted/managed service vendors? ability to deliver new IVR solutions in less than half the time it typically takes a premise-based provider to get a new application up and running.
To obtain a free copy of the 51-page report, IVR to the Rescue! A Benchmarking Study of 2010 Enterprise, Contact Center and IT Priorities and the Critical Role of IVRs in Achieving These Goals, visit the DMG Consulting Website at www.dmgconsult.com, or contact Deborah Navarra at Deborah.Navarra@DMGconsult.com or 516-628-1098. This benchmark study details the reasons why companies are turning to hosted IVRs to help them achieve their goals in 2010.
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About the Author
Donna Fluss is the President of DMG Consulting LLC, a firm specializing in customer-focused business strategy, operations and technology services. Ms. Fluss is a recognized thought leader and innovator in CRM, contact center and real-time analytics. She is the author of The Real-Time Contact Center and many leading industry Reports, including the Contact Center Performance Management Market Report, the Speech Analytics Market Report and the Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report.
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