Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, is a telephony service that allows a computer system to interact with customers via voice calls and SMS alerts. As COVID-19’s wounds on the global economy deepen with every passing week, businesses are looking to efficiently propel their work from home operations, without having to worry about hardware and maintenance.
Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic, recently lifted its lockdown, and other parts of China are slowly easing restrictions. But in Europe, the Indian subcontinent and North America, most populations are yet to reach the peak for positive cases. As citizens obey curfews to flatten the infection curve, businesses need quick solutions to stay profitable during the coronavirus outbreak. Their primary concern is to bridge the gap between unsold inventory, lowered revenue, frazzled vendors and confused customers.
During these tough times, inbound and outbound IVR packages are automated resources that can deliver the most bang for your buck. Top-notch companies received enormous gains in customer satisfaction and call management using cloud telephony, and there’s no time like the present to recreate the path of your heroes.
Here are the diverse ways a business can meet targets and enhance customer relationship management using an IVR campaigns:
Streamline your inbound calls
You might notice a spike on your dashboard in the number of incoming calls—and for good reason. The world is going through a crisis of historic proportions, and people don’t know how to respond to the pile-up.
How will travel and hospitality bookings be affected? Will essential services be delivered to all areas? What are some dos and don’ts during this emergency? Will penalties for delayed payments be relaxed? There’s a whirlwind of questions that both private and government bodies need to be prepared for.
To make sure your employees don’t get exhausted in solving these queries, invest in a comprehensive IVR protocol that offers options for self-servicing and pre-recorded messages.
The system can be programmed with a menu of common questions and answers that callers can browse through using their phone’s keypad. This frees up time from repetitive conversations and maintains uniformity in the kind of messaging your company is putting out. Different kinds of pre-recorded messages, using professional voice-over artists, can be installed to grant the most recent, up-to-date information on how your business is handling the crisis. Revised public relations agendas, marketing campaigns, or emergency announcements can be fed into this messaging so that the caller has complete knowledge before asking to connect to an agent.
Your business, if currently spread thin due to limited resources, can also earmark specific agents with rosters of possible questions and their pre-approved answers. Once the customer dials your office number, call forwarding can direct them to the most appropriate agent to resolve their query. Focus on efficient productivity, instead of lengthy conversations.
Nevertheless, panicked callers do need a human touch to feel calm and reassured again. Opt for a sticky agent feature, if you see this happening with your business. It allows callers to reconnect with the agent they previously spoke to, and capitalises on an established level of familiarity. This trust can lead to customer loyalty, and also saves time from repeating information to different agents.
An IVR system is also scalable after you cover your losses. Once your business has enough human resources again, you can expand your communications arsenal using a software upgrade.
Make timely moves on outbound calls
To drive any short-duration outreach campaigns, connect your IVR system with a missed call service. Your business can opt for multiple missed call numbers for a greater chance at success. For every successful call, the IVR system can acknowledge the interested customer with a personalised voice message, and then route them to agents as needed.
In case you’re near the concluding phase of marketing drives or business outreach, and need to conduct follow-up checks with vendors, then buying a transactional SMS package with your IVR number is a good idea to further enhance your IVR campaign. The package can send periodic reminders for payments and any other receivables to registered numbers. This ensures there is no default, no scope for late fees, and strengthened relationships with business partners. It also helps track minor financial gaps that could collect over time, and prevent them from turning into crippling accounting problems.
Alternatively, if you’re at the beginning of your campaign, then the service supplies OTP texts, ordering and shipping alerts, and offers notifications in case you plan clearance sales. Inventory is a touchy subject right now, but if your company deals in perishables, fashion or any other sector where quality degrades with time, then clearing stocks is important. People are unlikely to check e-mail as often, so mobile push notifications are an easy way to generate interest and maintain leads.
Many charitable individuals are also dipping their toes into social work for the sake of humanity. Some are working out of homes or colonies in knowns. While humanitarian work isn’t a competition, an IVR campaign can help you get the word out the circles, while others are gathering interested volunteers across citiere about your new organisation and its work profile. Not only can it send SMS alerts with emergency updates to registered customers, but also map out and track your new brand’s image and performance from a single, unified dashboard.
Medicine, food and water, hardware maintenance, delivery services, online education, subsidies, religious guidance to bring peace of mind–all these spheres are growing with strong outreach efforts, and there’s no reason why your plan to help your community should be left behind.
Final words
You might be leading a ten-person team working from home. You might have a small business that is suffering from lack of physical outreach. Or you might be managing an entire contact centre that is now learning to work remotely. In all these situations, buying an IVR system is a good idea to boost sales and reduce human dependency. They are proven to be more intelligent than predictive dialers and show minimal hassles after the initial setup and training process.
The time to innovate is now, and we’re sure you don’t need any more signs. Contact our toll-free number on 1800-120-4132 and make the shift with Servetel.
