Recently, Tata Docomo, India is advertising about IVR used in its customer care where it says that in order to keep it simple, they allow caller to speak to human agent quickly without going through maze of key-presses, listening lengthy and boring menu announcements!

Well, one line comes to my mind quickly, if you want your caller to get connected to human agent, without having to use self service IVR, then please use ACD ( automatic call distribution ) system available in almost any PBX available now a days!

The actor is Ranbir Kapoor, one of the most popular young actor in Hindi film industry. The script is in Hindi, the English translation would look resemble below :-

“Think if every one starts speaking the way customer care of mobile compaies treat their customer when they call,”

Daughter would say, “Daddy, may I have ice cream ?”
Father would reply, “If you want now, press 1, if you want to have it later, press 2″ ( laughter)

Daughter : Daddy, do you love me ?
Father : Your question is very important to us, please be online

(laughter)

While TATA-DOCOMO may think that making their caller to speak to human agent, “they are keeping it simple”, they should remember few points here about IVR :-

1. IVR is essentially a system which is capable of providing important information to caller on telephone in voice without any human intervention. While the same task can be performed by human, but machines perform better than human 24 hours a day with more efficiency as they don’t tire, they don’t take lunch break ( or attends natures call )!

2. A machine like IVR gets tired or bored unlike humn either it is morning or evening, summer or winter and can never abuse the caller even when abused or provoked by the caller!

3. Machines do not leave the job and join a rival company!

Finally, while IVR may not be the answer to all customer problems, but it can surely provide some information related to mobile phones like prepaid balance, listen to current bill amount and bill due date etc.

So, TATA Docomo should hire IVR specialist or VUI ( Voice User Interface) designer to make their customer care simpler and more efficient!

The biggest reason why people hate IVR is for the following scenario :-

User calls to IVR number and he gets to hear an welcome message and asked few options. After that the user is put on hold saying ‘All our customer care officers are busy, Your call is important to us, we will transfer the call to a customer care executive as soon as free. Thank you’ and this continue for 10 minutes, may be more! End result, caller disconnect, after few curse may be.

Most probably, many of us has faced this situation while dialing to Telecom customer care numbers (specially in India). But this kind of irritation and frustration can be reduced considerably by using a simple predictive dialer! Yes, instead of keeping the caller on old for many minutes, he should be given a simple option to press a number,saying press 2 if you want our executive to call you back as soon as they are free! Thank you!’ And let predictive dialer take care of the rest!

One must, specially call center owners, realise that people calling their call center or customer care, are also busy and need a quick solution to their problems. They should not be kept on hold for 10 odd minutes by playing messages informng how important their calls are! Better, they give him a call back. The customer care executive should have all the information which the caller entered in his previous IVR call. These features can be implemented using smart IVR software with built in predictive dialer.

How can an IVR application help ?
IVR can be used as very smart predictive dialer as I have posted earlier. Now same IVR can open a new thread or process which will get activated as soon a request for a call back by a caller is registered. This process will start monitoring any free customer care executive as when it finds one, it will immediately occupy seize the line and dial out the previous caller mobile.
As soon as the previous caller picks the phone, it will connect to the customer care officer and pop up the caller details as per his chosen options in his previous IVR call.

Advantages of this arrangement:

1. This will surely improve only customer satisfaction. Customer will not require to hold the line frustratingly.

2. This will increase efficiency of customer care executives as well as throughput of the call center.

3. Customer will be less irritated as they are no longer kept on hold for long time. Customer care exceutive will be less stressful as they will face less number irate customer.

4. Toll free numbers are paid by the call centers as per usage basis. While keeping a caller on hold, the minutes of usage increases for the call center organization. Even if the call center may belong to a telecom company, it still uses up precious finite resources, voice channels and decrease utilisation. So, IVR with predictive dialer can reduce cost of running call center.

Few enhancements :

An automatic SMS could be sent to the caller if he called form a mobile number informing he would receive a call from customer care with approximate time. Caller may be presented a request ID for the call back request.

I believe, this kind of a smart IVR with built int intelligent auto dialer feature will enhance customer experience of IVR and will help reduce hatred towards IVR.

Toll Free Number and IVRS has very close relationship.  Big companies, apart from Teleocm companies, which have large customer base, normally have a toll free number as call center. In US, normally Toll Free number starts with 800, in India, it starts with 1800.

Recently I got an inquiry from a company in India, about Toll Free Number  and setting up a call center. After talking to the company, I realised, many people have either no idea or wrong impression about Toll Free Number. For Example,

a. Toll Free numbers are free for both the toll free number owner as well as caller.

b.  The procedure to have Toll Free Number must be very difficult. Lot of Red-Tapism involved.

c. One toll free number will have one line.

But, actually Toll Free numbers are free for callers only! Not for the company who owns the Toll Free Number!  The company has to pay for each incoming calls by the duration of the caller or as per negotiation with the Telecom Service Provider. That is why Telecom Companies can have their own Toll Free numbers! and in India, it changes circle to circle too! Even the Telecom Company has to pay to other Telecom Operators to accept free calls from them!

It is not difficult at all to get a Toll Free Number! But hey, if you are late in getting hold of Toll Free Numbers, you may not get those fancy, easy to remember Toll Free Numbers! All you have to do is, call up any Teleom operator, they will come running to you or at least that is what happens in India!
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One toll free number will have minimum 30 channels or 30 lines! Because normally Toll Free numbers are provided through E1 lines. And having a Toll Free number with only 5/6 lines does not make any sense, also Toll Free Number without IVR System in place does not make any sense! At least that is my opinion. So, for any IVR System for a Toll Free Number, one must have Digital CTI Card!

Is there any company which can offer all these services ? I doubt if there is any such company presently. You  may get companies which can provide you solutions with Call Center Applications, some will provide you CRM applications, some will provide you only the EPABXs, ACD etc. But the complete solutions of a Toll Free  Number requires the followings:

1. Get a Toll free number from Telecom companies. Properly discuss calls landing from all other Teleom  operators in your area/country.

2. Look for suitable call center application

3. If you have already a CRM in place, which normally one does before one thinks about Toll Free Number and Call Center, integration might be a nightmare! It is not easy to integrate Call Center and exiting CRM, but then it is not difficult too! but proper care and planning must be taken.

4. Call Center Hardware along with proper power back up.

So it is a complete turnkey solution! If you thought you would get a Toll Free Number, put up an 4 channel IVRS and you will have a call center running, you are wrong!