4 min readHow to use IVR Data to improve Smart Call Routing

There are two kinds of people who implement IVR menus: first, those who choose the comfortable and easy solution of configuring menus that are OK for whoever calls them, at any moment of the day. As regards the second ones, they would rather go further by adapting their menus to every situation implied by their work. No worries, everything is all right with the first option, as long as it allows you to deliver a high-quality IVR. But the second one is far better if you also wish to improve your customer experience and generate positive feedback.

Thus, in order to help you to gradually and continuously improve your IVR, here are three case studies where analyzing your statistical reports can be very useful for your menus and call routing.

Decode your caller’s language

Do you know what language is spoken by the people who call you? If your company’s activity is mainly focused on a multicultural environment, you have probably implemented a menu to make your caller choose his or her language. Thanks to the statistical data on your phone calls, soon you will no longer have to ask them about this!

First of all, what conclusions can you draw from the reports you have? Let’s say your caller can select his language as English or French on your IVR. All you have to do is to take a look on the percentage of phone calls you received with each of these choices.

If you notice that most of your callers select one of the two languages (say French, for example), then you can make changes on your IVR parameters. And next time, when somebody will call you with a French phone number, your IVR will automatically recognize its size, format and origin. Then your caller will not have to listen to the language menu and will be redirected faster to a French-speaking IVR and interactor.

Classify their needs in your menus

The reasons why people call you can be extremely varied. To define their needs, you had the good initiative to implement an IVR with a menu so that your caller is easily guided to the right agent in your company. Congratulations! And here again, you just have to take a few minutes to analyze your phone call reports to notice some trends that could help you to optimize your menus.

As an example, let’s say your caller can choose between being directed to your Sales Service, your Support team or the reception desk in your company. Once one of these selected, he or she can tell your IVR the reason of his or her call.

And after deep analysis of your data, you realize that in December and January, the phone calls you usually receive are especially focused on existing orders and merchandise return, as illustrated on the schema above.

These facts allow you to modify your menu during this period of the year to offer these two options as primary ones in your menus, and add a third “Other” option for all the remaining reasons. This process is very efficient to enable your caller to spend less time to wait for speaking to the expert he or she wants to call.

The better you know them, the shorter they’ll wait

Draw a smile on your most loyal customers’ faces by offering them a fluent experience through IVR menus that do all the work for them! If your callers are known by your company as customers having a Premium account, for example, you can also refer to the statistics of your IVR reports to know if they call you often.

Before, your Premium members or customers had to get identified through a menu, and type their client ID by themselves and only then be able to access the next step in your IVR (see the schema above). Now you can make the time they spent on your vocal server no less than 80% shorter! To do this, you just have to link your IVR to a database that contains all the information related to your customers – their IDs, their names and phone numbers, … Thanks to this, when a Premium customer will make a call to your company with his usual phone number, your IVR will recognize this number and associate it directly to your caller’s ID.

In conclusion, you can make an extraordinary gift to your callers by changing your IVR’s structure just a little bit. This gift is the time you will make them save, and be sure there is no better reason for which a potential customer could choose your company. So get ready for being rewarded with many happy customers!