Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology is what a customer service call center uses to direct callers to the right department or help resource without the need for agent involvement. When done well, an IVR can assist most callers in finding their own answers and solving their own problems via automated self-service options, ultimately allowing the call center’s human agents to stay hands-off until there’s a truly pressing issue.
Many of the best Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems include IVRs to streamline a company’s operational efficiency and maximize its containment rate. However, as a company grows and the needs of its customers change, its IVR system must be continuously updated to prevent this rate from dropping. Otherwise, wait times can skyrocket, agent stress can build, and all of the hard-earned benefits can go the way of the dodo.
If you’ve never used IVR technology before, you’re going to want to start by creating a good, strategic, and intuitive call flow. For best results, you’ll also want to adapt and tweak the customer journey so that it’s always optimized. Lastly, it’s important to get familiar with a few red flags that can tell you when something is off so you can fix it right away.
IVR Call Flow Basics
IVR provides a simple way to accept calls and encourage callers to exhaust their self-service options before asking for additional help. When a customer calls in, the automated system greets them immediately by presenting them with a menu of options. These can include transfers to a specific department or agent, accessing recorded information like a business address, or looking up personal account details.
Each menu option corresponds to a number on the caller’s touch-tone keypad. A common example is to “press 0 for the operator.” With this method, callers can easily select the best-fit option or category that suits their needs by pressing the appropriate number. Certain systems even have speech recognition capabilities that allow callers to speak their answers.
The customized menu selections and automated checkpoints you create for your IVR system make up your IVR’s call flow, which is the series of steps that a caller will take from one option to the next until they reach their desired destination.
A high-performing call flow should feel simple and intuitive, with options that match exactly what customers are looking for without unnecessary steps. When illustrated, it will resemble a tree that branches out at each decision point, depicting the customer’s options throughout their journey as a caller.
IVRs work hand-in-hand with other modern technologies like Automated Call Distribution (ACD), which sends incoming calls to the next available or qualified agent (when it’s time for the caller to speak with a human). This approach ensures the most efficient use of both caller and agent time.
AI and machine learning technology also play a role in creating a more personalized IVR experience. For example, they’ve helped make it possible for customers to check the status of an online order or book a service appointment without the need for agent intervention.
One of the more exciting advancements in this field is called intelligent call routing, which uses complex algorithms and user-chosen parameters to automate the process of connecting callers to the most appropriate representative. This is what makes it possible for the system to send certain callers to certain agents based on things like the issue they’re trying to resolve and the skill level or area of expertise of the agent.
Another popular approach is to personalize the caller experience by reconnecting customers with agents they’ve spoken to in the past. The automated system does this by relying on established Customer Relationship Management (CRM) details like past call habits and behavioral insights. It can even identify their mood and personality traits, matching them with the agent most qualified to help.
How Can IVR Call Flow Maximize Containment Rate?
The effectiveness and efficiency of your IVR call flow is directly measurable as a percentage known as your containment rate. To calculate this number, you must divide the number of calls that were resolved solely using IVR technology by the total amount of incoming calls. Both of these data points should be easy to find in your call data.
A high containment rate—such as 60 percent and above—indicates that most callers are able to manage their own needs using your self-service menus. This is beneficial for callers and agents alike.
Customers often report a better overall call experience when they are empowered to find answers without an agent’s help. Many times, they can resolve an issue faster this way and prefer it to being stuck in a long, frustrating hold queue.
Similarly, agents tend to be happier and work more effectively when your containment rate is high. Essentially, it means they are wasting less time on easily resolvable issues and spending more time managing complex problems. Furthermore, when the IVR takes care of routine, yet popular calls, the entire team faces a lower call volume, relieving the added stress of long call queues filled with increasingly irritated customers.
How To Create a Call Flow From Scratch
In general, the best way to maximize your containment rate is to develop an effective IVR call flow. A good rule of thumb is to start with a main menu of three to five broad categories that best generalize what callers might need. You can find this information by combing through your call data for the most common reasons customers get in touch. These might include keywords and phrases such as “website help,” “billing questions,” and “update account information.”
From there, each selection should lead to a sub-menu of more specialized options designed to tackle the caller’s issue. These choices can include an automated recording of useful information such as business addresses and hours of operation. Keep in mind that modern AI integrations and features can also automate the sharing of caller-specific details, such as invoice totals and account balances.
Before getting too specific with your options, remember to keep your menus simple and concise. Otherwise, confused customers might “nope out” of your call flow to seek agent assistance or abandon the call altogether. Of course, there may be points where you choose to connect callers with an agent, but you don’t want this happening too early because it defeats the purpose of having self-service options if nobody uses them.
That said, it’s still a good practice to include an option to “dial 0” at any time so that a caller can get in line to speak with a human agent right away. In many cases, just providing that option supports a better call experience, even if callers don’t use it.
Likewise, another good practice is to offer a callback rather than forcing a caller to wait until the next agent becomes available. This approach gives customers some more freedom while also preventing your average handle time (AHT) from getting too high.
How to Spot IVR Call Flow Issues
Perhaps the most helpful metric for measuring the success of your IVR call flow is your TCR (task completion rate). Your process should be engineered to carry callers through all of the tasks associated with reaching the overall goal for their call. As you set these specific tasks in your system, it tracks each individual list item and notices whether or not the customer stopped.
This stored data reveals many valuable insights, including the average time required to complete each step—which contributes to your overall AHT—as well as the number of callers who opt out of the call flow at a specific point in the process. You can use these insights to tighten up your approach and investigate certain areas that aren’t working.
Another way to monitor for your call flow for inefficiencies is simply to keep an eye on your containment rate. Anytime it starts to dip—indicating that more callers are leaving or choosing to get help directly from an agent—you’ll need to revisit your setup.
Reviewing caller-agent interactions and CSAT (customer satisfaction) feedback can also be a great way to sniff out and identify new areas or processes that are ripe for self-service integrations. In many cases, you should be able to optimize your existing self-service options to accommodate for those previous blind spots.
When it comes to red flags (that you definitely should not be blind to), your call abandonment rate can be an extremely helpful indication that your call flow is unhelpful, frustrating, or even bugged. Of course, there will always be a certain number of calls that were abandoned due to issues outside of your control, such as poor call connections and sudden customer emergencies. However, if this rate suddenly begins to rise, your process might be managing too many needs, resulting in an overly complicated and overwhelming experience.
Take a look at your analytics data to discover exactly where these chokepoints are occurring, possibly indicating a confusing, troublesome, or ambiguous call menu. Use your available data to hone in on the most common and easily resolvable customer issues, allocating the rest to your agents.
Lastly, longer-than-normal AHTs can also be an indication that your call flow needs improvement. If your AHT is consistently longer than four minutes, you should revisit and revise your menu options for optimal clarity. Keep an eye out for redundant or unnecessary steps, as well as recorded menu selections that can easily be shortened.
Remember, if you ever need to gain some clarity on your own call flow, you can always add some temporary questions in the flow to ensure that it’s serving your callers’ needs properly. For example, after a caller indicates that they need billing help, you can have your IVR system ask them to confirm their request with a prompt such as, “You want to check your invoice status, is that right?”
Keep in mind that this approach can add to your AHT, so it’s best to use these only at specific points in the customer’s journey, and remove them if they become unnecessary.
Final Thoughts
There are several variables that can affect your containment rate, and these can come into play both before and after your IVR call flow is set in motion. Nevertheless, by paying close attention to certain metrics and scanning for red flags, you can isolate the problem areas and build a better IVR strategy as you go.