What Are the Best Practices for Designing Effective IVR Call Center Systems?

You’ve just finished setting up your business cloud call center. All the technical work is done, and you wonder about the next step.

Now, you need to start designing an efficient IVR call center system but don’t know how to begin.

Is the customer at the core of the process? Or is it the brand identity? Or the features of your services/products?

What if you receive a complete step-by-step guide to help you perform an optimal IVR call center system design?

By the end of this article, you will have gained valuable knowledge from our experience in the CX and call center management industry¹. This knowledge will empower you for the call center's performance testing and optimization by following the best practices and applying proven strategies.

Introduction to IVR System Importance in Call Centers

An IVR system saves time and money for businesses by efficiently handling high call volumes. It prioritizes urgent calls and routes them to the right agents, while AI and machine learning technology deliver requested information³. This reduces wait times and enhances customer satisfaction, ultimately leading to a more efficient business call center.

Understanding IVR System Capabilities and Limitations

An IVR is incredibly adaptable and capable of performing various tasks. Consider any operation your business model requires, and you'll find that IVR can facilitate it. An advanced system can handle the following:

• Verification of new accounts.
• Payments acceptance.
• Troubleshooting support.
• Account information update.
• Renewal request management.
• Any other tasks that might not need any human interference.

IVR technology, despite its advanced features, has limitations and challenges based on operator experience². Experienced operators address these limitations to minimize them. Some of them are:

• Limited natural language understanding
• Impersonal interactions
• Complex menu structures
• Long wait times

The mentioned limitations often stem from either misuse of IVR or a lack of understanding of your client base and its needs. However, even if it’s your first time using an IVR, you have the power to customize it to serve your customers best.

Key Principles for Effective IVR Design

Should you focus on business drivers like products, services, and other resources you can offer? Others focus on the customer. From our side, an effective IVR design depends on both. Here are 3 golden rules you can apply to build your dream IVR.

1—Set a seamless and logical structure: Clearly defining each option's purpose will help you determine what is helpful for the customer and what is not. This results in a short menu that customers can benefit from. To be practical, make your lists include five choices or less.

2—Personalization is king:  Your customer base's personalities and preferences should be comprehensible to you for better IVR system customization. By prioritizing commonly used options at the top of the menu and placing irrelevant options further down, you can make your system more efficient and specific to your business's needs.

3—Invest more in game-changing technologies: Call recognition technology is crucial for businesses to stay ahead of competitors⁴. It takes personalization a step further. This can determine the caller ID, voice biometrics for security, automatic number identification, and more technologies. For example, NLP (Natural Language Processing) can make computers interpret and interact with human speech. Instead of using a touch-tone or dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) method, the caller can speak about his issue verbally, and the system will resolve it.

Simplifying Menu Options for User Convenience

Customer convenience is crucial for businesses to efficiently handle requests, engage customers, and resolve issues. Scripting IVR menus can help achieve this by providing fast, engaging, and appropriate service.

1- Let customers interact with voice and keypad

Voice recognition is now a rising advanced technology. But it won’t be the best option for all customers. Some will prefer to press the button rather than speak about the issue. Keep the two mechanisms available to satisfy customers of all tastes.

2- Always include “Speak to an operator” as an option

Sometimes, the customer can not find what he needs within the menu. Should he hang up without getting his issue resolved? Of course not. Speaking to an operator should be an option, as it allows the customer to explain things better.

3- Allow customers to return to the parent menu

After the customer entered a new sub-menu, he didn’t find the option he sought. Should he end the call and start the call again? That will waste much of his valuable time. Just add the "Return to previous menu" option. It’ll be an option that enables him to return to the parent menu.

4- Mention the menu option before the needed action

To help your customer take the right action at the right time, the recorded voice message should be as follows: “The option comes before the action.” For example, “For sales, press 1”, the customer will do the action immediately without thinking if he wants to speak to a sales agent.

5- Include a callback option

To maintain call quality and avoid negative reactions, consider adding a "Callback" option to the service. This allows callers to end the current call and receive another during the day, ensuring efficient service.

6- Add your company departments to the main menu

While designing the menu, you should ask, "What departments does the customer need to deal with?” This will help you set up a menu that perfectly represents your company and meets the customers’ needs from each department.

Personalizing the IVR Experience

Humans value appreciation; they love that somebody knows them and remembers their preferences. In this section, we’ll discuss the crucial tricks that make the customer feel that this business relationship is personal and that your company values him. What are the IVR best practices for personalization in a call center system design?

1- Customize your greetings

To improve customer service, use the customer's name in the greeting and adjust the call timing based on the caller's local time. For example, "Hello, Kevin" is more effective than "Hello, sir." Also, start the conversation with "Good morning" if it's morning.

These messages are previously recorded, but they show how every detail related to the customer is essential to you.

2- Apply contextual prompts

Contextual clear prompts are options played simultaneously based on a customer's recent activity, such as purchasing an electronic device within the last 14 days, and offering relevant information.

3- Develop self-service options

The personalization effect extends to self-service options, allowing customers to review their order history and current status and issue ticket status based on their most recent interactions.

Technological Considerations for IVR Systems

To subscribe to the best IVR service, regard some technological considerations that differentiate between a sound IVR system and an excellent system.

1—Security: IVR systems must be secure to protect sensitive data like bank account information and patient treatment history from misuse, ensuring compliance standards protect customer confidentiality and integrity.

2—Uptime: IVR systems require careful consideration of server availability, both in-house and outsourced, to ensure a seamless experience with minimal downtime.

3—Disaster Recovery: The IVR service provider should have multiple plans in place for data malfunction, including backups, multiple data centers, and the storage capacity of these centers.

4—Scalability: Your business has the right to grow, and the number of seats in your call center will increase over time. This means you need an IVR system that considers call center scalability a significant factor.

5—Availability: Your IVR should align with your call center system design for the rotational shift that extends throughout the day. So, the IVR system should be working 24/7.

Integration With CRM and Database Systems

Integrating your IVR system with customer relationship management will achieve many features that accompany this integration.

1—Data Synchronization: Any update the agent adds to the customer profile on the CRM system will instantly affect the IVR. For example, if a customer has just made a purchase, the CRM system will record this activity, which will be reflected on IVR clear prompts.

2- Analytics and Reporting: A CRM integration can record the number of calls each agent receives or makes daily. A CRM also can detect when a customer’s issue has been resolved. Is it after one call only? Two calls? Five calls?

3- Automating Tasks: Agents, team leaders, or managers do not need to assign or delegate tasks. Based on the call results, the integration between CRM and IVR systems allows routine tasks to be automated without human intervention.

Leveraging AI and Machine Learning for Smarter IVR

AI and machine learning enhance security by ensuring caller identity and 24/7 availability, providing instant solutions for issues, and achieving real-time problem-solving through voice biometrics.

IVR Best Practices for Scripting Menus

Some people find scripting IVR menus difficult, but we find it enjoyable. Here are quick tips for writing successful IVR menu scripts that achieve the desired results.

1—Keep the script concise: Make the main menu and each submenu as short as possible, lasting about 15-30 seconds. Develop nested IVR call scripts that ensure the caller will stay on the call until the end.

2—Announce the hold times: You should announce the hold time duration as part of scripting IVR menus. Also, adding the “Call back” option lets the customer decide whether to wait or choose a callback and end the call.

3—Facilitate speaking to live agents: You should add the “Speak to a live agent” option to the main menu so the customer can select it in case it’s an urgent issue.

4—Consider cultural nuances: To cater to a diverse client base, create scripts in languages and accents that make customers feel comfortable and interactive. For instance, for US and UK citizens, use both accents. For MENA regions, Arabic is dominant, but the Egyptian accent differs from the Darja accent, for instance.

Writing Clear and Concise Prompts

Clear Prompts are eventually content that needs to be delivered to a particular customer. If the customer feels they are unrelated to him, he will surely lose interest. So, take on the following rules:

1—Make the customer feel welcomed by using friendly language and expressions that encourage them to repeat the call.

2—Not only the words are the only influential factor in the process, but also the tone. Record a tone of voice that lowers the tension of any situation.

3—Don’t let one characteristic dominate the script; balance conversational and informative so the customer can ask and find answers.

Using Natural Language for a Better User Experience

The natural language IVR revolutionized technology by allowing customers to express issues or inquiries verbally, transforming their speech into interactive interactions. Automatic speech recognition also enables IVRs to convert voice into comprehensible text, allowing customers to express their concerns without relying on specific keypad numbers.

Testing and Optimizing IVR Systems

Optimizing IVR systems is limitless. So, improving the system comes first from continually testing it. In that case, many types of tests to implement:

1- IVR Load Testing: This type lets you understand how an IVR system interacts under the expected load, simulating the expected call capacity.

2- IVR Stress Testing: Using a load exceeding the expected load capacity, this test is implemented to determine the IVR upper capacity limit and check how the IVR system behaves at that limit.

Implementing User Feedback for Continuous Improvement

At the end of a customer’s activity with any part of your business, such as sales, account management, customer success, etc., the IVR system can add a clear prompt to gather feedback.

Here are several metrics that determine customer satisfaction:

1- Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The NPS guides how customers can become brand marketers through word of mouth, with additional questions to enhance the conversation.

• On a scale from 1 to 10, How likely are you to recommend [Your Buisness] to a friend or colleague?

• Considering your (recent) purchase experience, how likely are you to recommend (company/product name) to your friend or colleague?

• How likely will you recommend (company/service name) to someone with similar business challenges?

• Based on your interaction with our support team, how likely are you to recommend (company/product name) to your friend or colleague?

• Following the latest feature updates, how likely would you be to recommend (software name) to a friend or colleague?

2- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT metric evaluates customer experience, not business recommendations. Consultants believe it directly correlates with increased business revenue. IVR script phrases can be used for this purpose.

• How easy was solving your problem with [your business] today? Very Difficult, Difficult, Neither, Easy, Very Easy.

• How satisfied were you with the quality of the products you’ve just received?

• How was your overall shopping experience?

• How satisfied were you with the clarity of the policy information provided?

• How satisfied were you with the ease of using our mobile app?

3- Customer Effort Score (CES)

This satisfaction metric checks the effort the customer has consumed to achieve his goal with your business. Here, you can add IVR script clear prompts in the form of questions:

• On a scale of 1-7, how easy was it to use the X feature?

• How easy was it to interact with our team?

• Was it easy to find the information you wanted on our website?

• How would you rate the ease of understanding the solution provided by our representative?

• How simple was it to schedule a follow-up call or support session?

A/B Testing and Optimization for IVR Menu Effectiveness

An e-commerce website conducted an IVR A/B testing and optimization plan after discovering 50% of callers dropped off the call. For continuous improvement, the organization replaced the main menu with a new one, ensuring the options were more relevant to the customers. This case demonstrates the importance of conducting A/B tests for continuous improvement.

The old menu was designed to be simple. The new menu, "A," aimed to streamline the process by focusing on managing orders, checking product prices, and solving technical problems. The second menu, "B," concentrates on accounts management, sales, finance, and technical support. Both scenarios yielded more efficient results than the original script, but one performed better. The question remains: which menu is more effective?

Here are some steps that will make the A/B test the best:

1— Identify the element you need to test. This could be:

• Tone
• Menu Length
• Prompt Wording
• Options

In the previous case, we chose the options.

2— Make a yes or no assumption. Based on this, develop a script and another one that contrasts it. If the first one gets better results, then your assumption is right; if the contrary happens, then your assumption is wrong.

Previously, we assumed that continuous improvement for better options would lower the dropout rate.

3— Create and align two scenarios with the rule that tells you to change one variable only.

4— Check the two scenarios to be tested and working efficiently.

5—Assign random callers to be exposed to the two scenarios. Apply scenario “A” to a portion of callers and scenario “B” to another portion. It’s preferred that the ratio become 50/50.

6- Analyze data and define the metrics that will be used to make the decision.

7- Choose and implement the better-performing scenario for the targeted customer base.

Conclusion: The Future of IVR in Enhancing Call Center Operations

The realm of IVR systems in call centers is still evolving. Within the article, we’ve discussed all the IVR best practices you can apply and implement in different scenarios to achieve your business goals with the help of the IVR system.