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6 Ways to Avoid Voice Mail Hell!
IVR---Businesses love it and
customers often hate it. Businesses, my own business included,
love IVR because it automatically manages incoming calls and
can literally replace the soon to be outdated position of
"operator".
IVR can link phone callers
(voice and/or touchtone) with a computer database. It can
accept a question, access the company's database and provide a
caller with the information they are seeking. It can also take
information from the caller, convert it to data and input that
data to the database.
But Customers hate it. Why?
Because they find themselves having to listen to cumbersome,
redundant, lengthy greetings. Because talking to a live person
resembles a game of dodge ball. Because they often have to
repeat information they've just spent 20 seconds giving the
IVR.
It's a fact. IVR is not
going away - at least not anytime soon. So if companies want
customers to love it as much as THEY do, some restructuring
has got to take place.
1. Don't
make the option of speaking to a live agent resemble a game of
dodge ball. No
matter how useful your automated system may be, there will
always be times when customers just want to speak to a real
person. My co-author, Jeff Magee (www.jeffreymagee.com) has an
IVR that is music to caller's ears. The first thing you hear
when you call his office is, "To talk to a live body
right now, press 0." You need to make speaking to a
live agent this simple and easy.
2.
This is my personal pet peeve: Don't make callers repeat
information collected in the IVR to the live agent they are
transferred to. If
you want callers to believe that the IVR can help them resolve
a problem, respect the time they put into the IVR and don't
ask for the same answers twice.
3.
Give callers an option to navigate the system using touch-tone
(keypad) or speech recognition. When
I call the toll-free number on the back of my CitiBank
business credit card, I give all of my information verbally.
That's right. I 'speak' my account number and every option I
choose. This is handy when I'm multi-tasking.
4.
Make your opening brief. Believe
me, there is nothing worse than having to listen to a gabby,
rhetorical, verbose 30 second greeting. Say only what NEEDS to
be said and move on so that you don't waste callers' time.
5. Do
not immediately "re-direct" callers to your website.
I recently
called a company's toll-free number and after spending 40
seconds in voicemail hell and then holding endlessly for a
live body, the agent immediately asked me, "Did you try
going to our website?" I almost lost it. Obviously, if I
had visited the website, I didn't get the help I needed and
besides, isn't the relevant thing here the fact that I am on
the telephone talking to YOU?!!! When a voice mail system
immediately directs customers to a website it's like saying, "We'd
rather not talk to you. So, please hang up and go to our
website so that we don't have to actually talk to you." If
you must mention your website, a good place to mention it is
at the closing of the voice message.
6.
Delay the call-recoding disclaimer.
Yada, yada, yada. If you are only recording
interactions between callers and live agents, not the
automated part of calls, then hold off the mandatory message,
"This call may be recorded for quality assurance
purposes" to just before the call is being
transferred to a live agent. Such disclaimers not only
lengthen the opening prompt but have come to be taken as a cue
that the caller is about to be transferred to a live agent and
may needlessly frustrate callers when no such transfer
follows.
Implement
these 6 tips and you'll springboard your IVR for hellacious to
heavenly!
About
the Author
Myra
Golden is one of the service industry's most prominent
trainers and a highly regarded business growth strategist.
Companies hire Myra and her team to help them build, recover,
and strengthen customer relationships. She can be reached at
866-873-8419 or by email at myra@myragolden.com.
She also has a website: www.myragolden.com.
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