Is Your Customer Self-Service Solution Optimized? Think Again
The missing link in most Interactive Voice Response programs is a continuous improvement process that can dramatically affect consumer satisfaction and your bottom line
By Justin Lemrow, Director of Continuous Improvement Practice, Contact Solutions
Most enterprises treat their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system like a family car. When you bring it home for the first time, it feels like it’s perfect. It sparkles like a diamond, there’s not a scratch on it, the engine purrs like a kitten and it’s even got that new car smell. It can last a reasonably long time if you maintain it properly, but most people just change the oil and the tires when absolutely necessary. And while it grows comfortable and familiar, you never expect it to get any better than the day you bought it.
Contrast this with a race car, which never rests quietly under a tarp waiting for the next big race. It will be in the shop with a mechanic tinkering under the hood trying to squeeze a few more horsepower out of the engine, or checking tires and suspension to tailor the car’s performance to the demands of the next race course. A world class racing team expects its cars to keep getting better.
So when it comes to customer self-service, is your IVR the company minivan, or a world class racing machine?
A well-oiled customer self-service solution can lead to higher rates of self-service, lower contact center costs and increased customer satisfaction that a minivan IVR could never provide. If you’re not continuously improving your IVR, you’re leaving both money and customer satisfaction on the table. But you’re not alone. Most enterprises aren’t properly measuring the effectiveness of their self-service solutions, and they aren’t collecting the data necessary to make incremental improvements on a regular basis.
In today's fast-paced, technology-focused world, contact centers have had to evolve quickly to keep up with the always-on consumer and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. However, the speed and demand of the ever-changing consumer landscape has caused many businesses to overlook one critical link in the value chain: the continuous improvement of the IVR.
So what exactly is continuous improvement? We define it as the process by which a company sets a number of guidelines, or benchmarks, and mines data to compare and contrast consumer sentiments and to determine the overall satisfaction level of the customer experience within the call center. You must mine the right data and find the voice of your consumers – look beyond just what they did, and also analyze their perception of every customer service interaction. Then, compare those perceptions with established benchmarks and share the findings with other divisions to drive business decisions. Better, deeper analysis of the right data is essential to continuous improvement of the customer experience.
Next, consider what continuous improvement of your IVR can do for your organization. Regular, detailed analysis of customer interactions can provide an incredible amount of valuable feedback. One simple example, if three out of five customers of a company are using self-service solutions to check account balances, but are not satisfied with the amount of time it takes to complete that task, the sponsoring business would know that is a self-service feature which should be improved in order to quickly and directly impact customer satisfaction. Continuous improvement provides the ability to find potential enhancements within your IVR system that may otherwise go unnoticed. When you are able to continuously improve the overall customer experience and meet your customer satisfaction goals, you will make better business decisions and your bottom line will reap the rewards.
In order to implement and effective continuous improvement program, follow the step-by-step guidelines below:
Phase #1 – Identification
The first step toward creating a continuous improvement program is the discovery process, or identification. Here, you must delve deep into your business practices, processes, environment, customer perspectives and challenges. You need to have an honest understanding of where you are so you can determine where you want to be in the future.
Once you have a clear picture of where you are, the next step is goal alignment. If you don't understand or articulate the overall business goals aligned with your contact center solutions, you will not be able to track progress toward reaching, or even surpassing, those goals. These should also tie-in to your overall business goal picture. An effective continuous improvement practice will keep your self-service solution aligned to, and optimized with, your business goals.
Along with setting goals, it is also imperative to create benchmarks for your existing performance, customer experience and service ratings, as well as total cost of ownership, or the estimate of the direct and indirect costs of your current self-service solution. Your goals and benchmarks should then be tracked using processes by which you can determine the effectiveness of your program.
Phase #2 – Implementation
After the benchmarks have been founded and goals set, the next phase is where the established recommendations are implemented, new integrations commence and the user-centered design is put in place. Within this phase, be sure you understand and research your customers' needs so you will be able to address them and offer the self-service solutions they desire. Your strategy must be user-centered. To that end, research and determine best practices that have been used internally, as well as from other companies, that can help you reach your goals.
After you feel you have your finger on the pulse of your customers' wants and needs, you will need to be sure you have at your disposal technology that can track data against your set goals and benchmarks to reveal actionable analytics. You must also be prepared to implement ongoing actionable insight based on the analytic tools you have in place.
Phase #3 – Measurement
In the third phase, data from implementation of the new recommendations, integrations and design is mined, including cost savings and overall customer experience rating. This is the most important phase of any continuous improvement process. Without measuring customer sentiments against set benchmarks, it would be impossible to have an effective process.
One of the most important measurement tools to track the effectiveness of the continuous improvement implementation is the Customer Experience (CX) rating. A CX rating provides a comprehensive assessment of the contact center experience, including caller perceptions and system performance that has a direct impact on experience. When combined with the other continuous improvement practice components, the CX rating provides an actionable customer experience management system.
Phase #4 – Assurance
The fourth continuous improvement phase compares data from the concrete benchmarks and pits those numbers against the new cost savings and customer experience rating to determine effectiveness of the implementation. At this point, you should be able to compare data across channels and programs and determine what changes need to be made, if any, in order to meet overall business goals and strengthen your bottom line.
Phase #5 – Repeat
It wouldn’t be called ‘continuous’ if it didn’t continue, so as soon as you finish one cycle, it’s time to start again. Start the process all over and continue.
Every organization is unique, so there is not one turn-key solution or easy way to implement an IVR continuous improvement program. Additionally, companies truly committed to continuously improving their self service have to be ready to dedicate the resources, development, expertise and tools for the project. This isn’t an occasional project, but rather an ongoing way of doing business. It may sound daunting, which is why most companies completely ignore the necessity of continuous improvement. However, companies that do make the commitment reap the rewards. At Contact Solutions, where we design self-service solutions for many of the world’s leading companies, we have identified more than $15 million of new savings this year alone for client IVR systems that were already deployed and approved. Without a continuous improvement process, those savings would never have been possible.
Consider, is your customer self service truly optimized?