IVR Integration for Call Centers
The ability to provide consistent, exceptional customer service is always top of mind for any contact center. In today’s day and age, the faster a customer can get answers to their question, the more likely they’ll have a positive customer experience. Whether a customer wants to speak to a specific department or learn important company information, contact centers must provide customers with efficient options to get the answers they need.
Cloud IVR Integration, or interactive voice response, does just that. It is an automated voice system that takes the information provided by the customer on an inbound call and directs the call to the appropriate agent. IVR saves time for both contact center agents and customers.
Now that you understand what Cloud IVR Integration is, let’s look at a few reasons why it’s essential for every inbound call center: or interactive voice response, does just that. It is an automated voice system that takes the information provided by the customer on an inbound call and directs the call to the appropriate agent. IVR saves time for both contact center agents and customers.
Available 24/7
It’s difficult to ensure agents are always available to answer customer calls. Agents could be experiencing high call volumes, on their breaks, or even clocked out for the day. Luckily, this solution is available 24/7. If a customer wants to call during off hours, they’ll still hear a professional message from the company and, in some cases, receive automated ways to resolve their issue.
Increased First Call Resolution
Nothing is more frustrating for customers than having to make multiple calls to get answers. Giving customers the option to choose, like dialing a number to speak to a specific department, helps customers get in contact with the appropriate resource fast. For common questions like store hours, automated messages can also provide answers to questions without the help of a live agent.
Cost-Effective
This powerful tool is making contact centers more cost effective by allowing more calls during peak hours. Before, if there were large call volumes, contact centers only had the option of hiring more agents. This means increased costs. Now, answers to general customer questions can be included in IVR’s automated messages, while more complicated questions can be routed to the right agents.
Automatic Updates
Before cloud technology, making changes to a contact center meant a lot of manual work including updating complicated phone trees and directories. This can be extremely time consuming and leaves room for human error and could cost call centers thousands considering how misrouted calls can lead to a poor customer experience. Cloud IVR integration is a great way to replace this manual process. Whenever a supervisor wants to make a change to the system, the updates are automatically synced. This means no more wasted time and potential errors when updating contact center phone trees.
Cloud IVR integration will only continue to evolve and exceed customer expectations by providing an efficient way for customers to get the information they need.
To learn more about how contact centers can provide even more value in addition to cloud IVR integration, check out Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agents.
Cloud-Based Agility
Moving to the cloud will allow for faster, easier deployments, seamless upgrades, flexible scalability, and reduced capital expenditures associated with on-premises systems.
Connected Journeys
The contact center should support customer journeys across web chat and social messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and others.
Omnichannel Unification
Shoppers will be coming in from many different channels, so it will streamline the customer experience to route interactions using the same logic.
Customer Context
Agents must begin the conversation right where the customer left off online. When the customer’s needs are transferred to an agent in real time, your brand is creating a seamless transition from web to contact center. Remove customer stress, unneeded customer repetition, wasted time, and deliver a world-class customer experience
CRM 
Integration
Customer relationship management (CRM) system integration can improve the shopper experience by using CRM data to find the last person spoken to, use shopper purchase history to find the best expert, etc. In addition, once the connection occurs, your staff can access past interaction history and CRM information to understand the customer’s journey and deliver a more personalized experience.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI can deliver next- best-action recommendations and assist in responses that will improve conversion rates, increase shopping cart value, and speed up responses.
Real-Time Management
Supervisors should monitor messaging interactions in real time and assist if needed, even if they are not in the same location.
AI & PCI Compliance
Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) can automate payment processing across digital channels and reduce your compliance risk by collecting sensitive customer data without revealing it to a human agent. Make sure that the IVAs can easily integrate with your payment gateways.
