What is automatic call back systems ?

Automatic call back service can be defined as calling back by customer care department of some organisation to its client when it is unable to attend the call by the client or solve the clients problem satisfactorily and make a follow up call later. Call back service is employed majorly in a situation when all agents are busy in a call centre and unable to attend an incoming call.

Caller gets disconnected or gets an information before disconnection that she would be called back in some fixed time. So this way, the caller does not have to hold the phone listening to some ‘Hold Music’. The call centre can also register more such requests instead of giving ‘busy tone’ to callers while dialing the toll free number of customer service.

There are two types of call back services.
1. Automated Call Back Services
2. Manual Call Back Services

1. Automated Call Back Service

Automated call back service is where the caller registers itself for the call back service through various means. The call centre also schedules the automated call back service to the client automatically. It can also inform the caller expected time of call. Some of the methods how this kind of automated call back service is registered :-

a. Call by missed call
Missed Call has become a free tool for message transfer in India specifically.
or call back by submission of form in website. Apart from intentional missed call, there are also instances where some calls go unattended due to all agents being busy.

b. Online Registration

All organisations now a days have a website and every website has a contact us form which includes a text box for phone number too. This form is filled up web visitors and submit the form. This number is then automatically schedule for call back. Some intelligence like calling back in office hour as per visitors timezone, language etc. could also be stored.
Apart of online contact form, there are many online form submission like online registration, online enquiry etc. where automated call back service is scheduled.

2. Manual Call Back Systems

In manual call back services, the phone numbers are collected using ‘offline methods’ like filling up feedback form at shops, restaurants etc. After collecting the name and phone numbers from such forms, it is manually processed and entered in the call back system by a person to schedule the call back service.

With SMS ( short messaging service) becoming very common and known by every mobile phone users, SMS is widely used to alert about the time and subject of the call back service. It prepares the person who is expecting the call back service.

Call back service is beneficial for both the caller as well as the call centre or any company. It captures the enquiry and assures of follow up. Above all, it maintains all records which can be used for various analysis.

In the next part, I would try to explain how to implement automated call back service.

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!

What is predictive dialer and what is Click To Call ?

Predictive dialer is such smart automatic telephone dialer system which dials out a telephone number from a list of telephone numbers in order to reduce holding time for both agent in call center as well as the person who is called from it. Though there are various techniques to implement predictive dialer, the basic aims remains same :-
1. Called party should not kept on hold;
2. Agent in call center should not waste time in hearing RBT ( Ring Back Tone) of the called number.

Click To Call and Predictive Dialer

Click To Call Service is a one to one conference where the called party ( as in above Predictive Dialer Definition) initiates the call and speaks to human agent immediately! So the immediate purpose of reducing wait period for both called party and agent is automatically achieved!

Now, does that mean that Click To Call service would (should) replace predictive dialer in order to maximize use of finite and costly resource like outbound telephone call charges as well as time of human agent ?

The first consideration is predictive dialer is not used just as a call back service where some user or web visitor will register their phone number (submit their phone number by filling up a form) expecting a call back from the website or some call center of the company who owns the web site.

Also, predictive dialer can dial from any phone list, not necessarily gathered from web site visitors, but also from off-line registrations, manual phone number collection, collecting phone numbers by door to door marketing etc., not to mention collecting of phone numbers when a user provides his phone number when registers for service, like a DTH ( Direct to Home) TV service, registering for credit card, bank account etc.

While click to call service essentially collects numbers from website visitors only. Apart from traditional Click To Call service, now a days, smart implementation of click to call where a call is imitated as soon as a web form is submitted website visitor, which acts as an additional feature of immediate call back service on an existing registration form! ( Niche Tech Service private Limited provides such customised Click To Call service. )

So, most probably, it will not be possible that Click To Call Service would replace predictive dialer!

Both Predictive Dialer and Click To call service can have options to choose the time when a person expects the call back from the website or call center.

Predictive dialer is also used to make scheduled outgoing calls which is not either standard function in a Click To Call service or available only at extra cost or when a Click To call service with IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) functionality! But now a days, many Click to Call service providers can provide complete IVR functionality or solution in a Click To Call service too.

So, a click to call system, along with smart and customizable IVR at the back end of it, can be surely a next generation of Predictive Dialer and can potentially dethrone it from future call center!

Another important point to consider is, predictive dialer can no longer be used to blast out calls to random numbers after strict implementation of “National Do No Call registry” ( NDNC) in order to stop unsolicited calls. Click To Call service facility eliminates the requirement NDNC registry before making calls. But then, spammers can surely misuse Click To Call!

I had posted about possibility of replacing predictive dialer with outbound IVR, and now I feel, and and IVR system with outbound feature and Click To Call functionality can surely replace aging predictive dialer and bring in cost saving as well as ‘Cloud Telephony’ in Call Center world!

I have many experiences with my clients or people whom I had interacted during their commissioning of IVR system, that they give least importance to the scripting as well as voice prompt. Most of the times, they discuss and emphasis on number of simultaneous calls, integration of the IVR with some CRM ( customer resource management) system or some other interesting IVR feature as well as its future expansion as well as maintenance. Nothing wrong for emphasizing on these aspects of IVR system, but after commissioning of the IVR, they have started changing the script as well as voice prompts many times over!

Many of clients have started out with TTS ( Text To Speech ) generated voice prompts and later ended up recording voice prompts by different artists in a studio! I have also seen some call center owner as well as some companies deploying voice recorded in office by some female staff using a PC and MIC, and putting the IVR into production. Invariably, they changed the voice prompts to studio recorded voice prompts from professional artists after one month or so!

While in some cases use of TTS ( Text To Speech) is inevitable or a must ( like retrieving dynamic data from database and playing them out), but there is no reason to use TTS or TTS generated voice prompts fixed menus, numerals as well as fixed names!

I would always advise people to use professionally recorded voice prompts in any IVR in production environment. While use of TTS generated voice prompts during testing and development phase makes sense, but in production, TTS should be avoided. Here are few reasons why one must use professionally recorded voice prompts only :-

1. Voice prompt is the only interface to the caller

In IVR system, voice prompts are the only direct interface with the telephone caller and telephone caller has no means to know about other aspects of the IVR system. A caller to an IVR system is not bothered about the technology behind the IVR system, or use of API ( Application Programming Interface) based on latest web technologies to fetch the required information for the caller at the back end. The caller is just bother about his required information and how quickly he could access it and how easily he could listen and understand without having to press any key to listen again!

2. Professional Voice Prompts gives seriousness to the IVR system

For many call center as well as customer service and support, IVR is the one which picks calls from every caller including the irate and fed-up callers! Professional, clear and pleasant voice ( I avoid using the word female) may have good effect on the caller and it may give indication to him what he may expect from the call! Unprofessional and difficult to understand voice prompts may scare away the caller or make him more non-cooperating irate customer!

3. Voice Prompts may make IVR caller experience pleasant

A clear and pleasant voice with understandable accent as well as pronunciation will surely increase user experience as well as satisfaction of the caller! A person may call to the IVR from a noisy background area and that will compound his problems in understanding IVR voice prompts or menu options if TTS generated machine prompts are used.

A professional voice prompt provider will always make the voice prompt in proper volume, speed, pitch as well as pronunciation which are a must for any production grade IVR system.

So, in order to improve usability and caller satisfaction, one should use services from a professional voice prompt provider, or at least use voice prompts recorded in studio by professional voice over artist.

What is call back feature ?

Call Back feature is when a person call a number and then disconnect and immediately that dialed number calls back the person. Now the person can enter another phone number and get connected to that phone number! This kind of phone number which calls back a person is also known as DID ( Direct Inbound Dialing) or Direct Dial-in.

Implementing Call Back Service using IVR

Call back feature is implemented using a smart IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System which performs three tasks :-

1. Detect caller ID and look up in a database if the caller id is a registered for call back service.

2. If the detected Caller ID is a registered user for call back service, then make an outbound call.

3. Once the Caller ID picks up the call, prompt for entering a phone number. The IVR then makes another out bound call to this entered phone number and bridge with the earlier call.

Recently, this kind of call back service is also available as web based service where a user just login to a website, enters his own registered number and then the other number with whom he wants to speak to. Call back service is used where direct dialing is costlier.

So, majorly call back feature is useful for lowering call cost or when a company does not want its subscribers for making support calls. Presently, most people use Toll Free number for this purpose. Toll free numbers are those numbers where caller does not pay, but the owner of the toll free number pays per minute charges.

But with falling outbound call rates as well as smart arrangement of outbound IVR arrangements, companies are now actively looking to use call back services instead of costlier toll free numbers.

A typical toll free number in India costs around Rs. 2.5/- per minute while an outbound call from a call center using outbound IVR and EPABX arrangement as I described in my earlier post about outbound Calling arrangement in India , per minute cost of making outbound call would be less than 45 paise per minute or completely free for small monthly subscription!

With this kind of cost advantage, many people are now receptive to the idea of using call back service instead of traditional toll free number. Apart from cost advantage, call back service offers few other advantages too :-

1. Since it is an outbound call with IVR behind it, it may call back at any time and record a message if there is no one to receive the call. In a toll free, either it will have to be received by some one or it will simply ring out without any record of it.

2. In a call center, iit is possible that Call Back will dial out the number while ensuring a customer care executive available to receive the call. It will increase customer satisfaction and can increase efficiency of customer care executives.

3. Many advanced feature could be implemented using the same IVR hardware.

So, if you are really looking to minimise your toll free numbers cost and maximise automation using IVR, most probably, it is time you look for call back service with smart Outbound IVR!

The usage of IVR is growing in India. IVR has been used for long time in India like any other country in the world. These IVR systems were majorly used as train status information, flight status information and other few complaint lodging/booking system. And at that time ( before 1997), India had very low telecom density. After telecom boom in 1999, telecom density in India has grown to over 44% by 2010. Until recently, India was adding almost 10m telephone ( both land line and mobile) users per month.

Usage of IVR has also seen growth int the same period. Also, IVR systems are being used in many new areas increasingly. In my opinion, there are four major areas where IVR is being increasingly used in India :-

1. IVR as Value Added Service
2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center
3. IVR in payment gateways
4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.

1. IVR for value added service

After mobile boom in India, SMS based VAS services saw phenomenal growth. At the same time, voice portals have also entered into the area with premium charging per minute. CRBT service can also be termed as IVR system which has become major revenue earner for mobile companies in India.
Recently, IVR is also being used as voice blasting services for product and service promotions, election campaigning, or any telephonic remainder service. Even IVR based click to call service has also started in India. I think, this is one type of IVR which has huge potential for growth in India.

2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center

With India’s large English speaking population, BPO industry flourished after 2000 and many call centers have sprung up. With these call center, the use of outbound dialer or predictive dialer grew. Inbound IVR has been increasingly used in call center to screening the caller, providing mundane and regular information to the callers. Though call centers in India have not started very intelligent IVR yet which could be used for complete automated self service complaint management systems or any other self-help automated system.
Lately, people have been trying to integrate IVR with existing CRM software or bundle IVR with newer version of CRM software.

3. IVR in payment gateways

With major international and private banks opening shops in India, IVR has found usage in payment gateways as well as banks as Phone banking service.
IVR is also being used in payment gateways for credit card transaction using telephone. This kind of IVR needs to be PCI compliant and there have been many vendor which have developed PCI compliant IVR software. With low penetration of internet, but very high penetration of mobile phone and telephone, this type of IVR may grow healthily in recent time.

4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.
Indian Railways and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) has been oldest users of IVR in India. Indian Railways has installed many IVR systems ate individual busy stations for providing Train status information, Ticket Reservation status enquiry etc.
BSNL has been using IVR for fault and complaint booking. Apart from these two, many PSUs have been using Voice Mail systems in their PABXs.
Airlines have also been using inbound IVR for updating flight status information.

Apart from these, IVR in clinical trial has not really picked up here in India which is one of the most widely use area in other parts of the world. But there are many interesting IVR usage in India and we can be sure that some innovative IVR application will be developed by some company to exploit its huge number of telephone users!

While outbound IVR systems are being widely used now a days for many promotional activities, but outbound IVR potential as smart predictive dialer is still to be tapped.

While many acknowledge that, outbound IVR has many advantages over predictive dialer, call centers still deploy predictive dialer for making outbound calls and then transferring the calls to human agents.

History of predictive dialer shows, it came to be used in call centers for increase efficiency of human agents, as well as effective monitoring by supervises. Predictive dialer increase productivity by automating the dialing, then detecting answering machine, FAX tone or human answering and then connecting to human agent. Any outbound IVR with small computation power using CPA ( Call Progress Analysis) can achieve these and much more!

Another major advantage of outbound IVR ( or any IVR for that matter) is its availability in both on-premise and hosted environment. Hosted environment provides many advantages like low initial cost as well as sudden spike in call volume! Predictive dialer are normally on premise and sudden spike of calls can only be served by increasing number of ports in it.

So, why call center owners are still having separate predictive dialer and not using their inbound IVR as predictive dialer in outbound IVR configuration ?

As I had interacted some call center owners as well as few vendors for call center industry, I think, in India, only two reasons for not using outbound IVR as predictive dialer :-

1. Lack of information
Not many people are aware that IVR can be used for making outbound calls and then transferring it to human agent along with call whispering or agent pop up with the connected call. Many call center owners include inbound IVR, but they are not aware or made aware that the same IVR could be used for making outbound calls as well as it can eliminate predictive dialer all together.
IVR being based on a PC, it has many options for monitoring, accessing data from various sources as well as present status of calls and activity of human agents.

2. Lack of confidence in IVR applications
While predictive dialer is a proven product, but many consider IVR applications to be just add-on and stand-by arrangement in India. Most probably, this has to do with technology adoption problem! Also, many people cite example of ‘hard coded’ IVR applications and lack of support and maintenance by IVR companies. Most of the IVR companies in India uses CTI boards APIs to develop IVR applications instead of open standards or tools. It may create problem in upgrading the application as well as maintenance.

So, it looks like outbound IVR will not be able to replace predictive dialer as preferred ‘smart dialer’ in call center in near future in India.

Complaint Management is one of the basic business process or task for any company which provides any services or sells any product to end users. It is almost impossible to run business or any utility service without getting some complaints by its users. On a lighter note, even a perfect product like human makes few ‘complaints’ to God about his problems.

While many big corporates or government agencies have dedicated department for handling customer inquiries, service requests, updates using either call center or contact center, smaller organisations can not afford to have dedicated call center. Also, having a call center may not be a feasible proposition where there is not huge number of complaints or inquiries or service requests.

While it may be easy to start a web based complaint management system where people may visit the website and log their complaints. But it may not be always possible for all type of customer to have internet connection and a PC. Above all, it may happen that internet connection itself is not working and an user needs to complaint to ISP ( Internet Service Provider). Complaint management is fairly established process where few basic ‘processes’ are done :-

1. User lodges a complaint and gets confirmation of the lodged complaint in form of some unique complaint ticket, complaint id etc.

2. User can check status of his complaints using the complaint ticket id.

3. User gets notified when the complaint is rectified.

4. At the back end, the service department of the organisation must be notified of the new complaint immediately for information as well as rectification measure.

5. It should also have editing capability thereby where an authorized service engineer can check pending complaints and then update its status to rectified or closed.

So, complaint system is fairly systematic process which can be automated and IVR ( interactive voice response) System can be used effectively for handling all the steps above. IVR can handle both incoming complaint lodging part as well as notifying user on rectification using outbound IVR flow.

Hosted IVR is can be used for complaint management system quickly and with minimum initial investment. All hosted IVR service providers offer customised IVR call flow as per complaint management IVR requirement.

Few of the benefits of having IVR based Complaint Management system in hosted environments are :-

1. By using hosted IVR service, one can minimise initial investment as well as go live pretty quickly.

2. One can use it on pilot basis how clients are using it as well as testing its usefulness in improving turn around time for attending complaint and rectification.

3. Hosted IVR provides facility like handling large call spikes in case of some failure and when organization expects large complaint calls.

4. Normally, hosted IVR service providers are skilled IVR professionals, so one can be assured of high IVR up-time as well as any future up-gradation or customisation requirement with latest technologies.

5. Hosted IVR complaint management system has built in web-based access for viewing, modifying customer complaints. It makes easier for any authorised person to access the complaint management system anywhere, from home or office or even while traveling.

6. Since it maintains all call records both incoming and outbound, it can also serve as an authentic ‘record of activity’ both by complainant as well as service engineer who had attended the complaint.

So, there are many benefits of using hosted IVR management system. One useful enhancement could be use of SMS in case the complainant has a mobile number for any notification service along with IVR voice call.

Everyone involved in IVR industry may have heard reasons why normal users, customers ‘hate’ using IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) Systems. There are many reasons why people hate using IVR and how IVR could be made more user-friendly with good VUI design practices. I thought I would update top five things about IVR that people hate about.

1. Duplicate Information

When customer calls to any call center looking for support, query etc., they are normally answered by IVR and customer needs to provide their information like phone number, account ID etc. ( depending on services they subscribe to). After all these ‘question-answer-round’ and agonising repeat-confirmation round by IVR, customer is finally connected to a CSR or human agent. But immediately, customer is asked the same questions which he had already answered to IVR!

Simple POP-UP screen at CSR dsktop is the solution and many call center do not use them and the customer ire falls on IVR!

2. Being on-hold for long time before one may speak to human agent

After customer’s call is connected and then when she chooses to speak to human/live agent, IVR takes long time to actually transfer the call to live agent as live agents are busy. While everybody agrees that human resources are costly, but so are the time of customers/callers! This long time required for successful call transfer to human agents make customer hate IVR.

Smart predictive dialer is one solution to this.

3. Irritating music on hold/advertisement

As if making wait to speak an human agent is not enough to antagonize the caller, many people use IVR to play irritating music or advertisements while call hold! Imagine, one customer wants to complaint about a service and he gets to listen to advertisements about the same service while waiting to lodge her complaint against the very service!

It is not possible to play music which would be liked by everyone. Simple all waiting tone or announcing of time remaining till CSR would be free to attend the call should be good enough information during call wait.

4. Having to repeat YES/NO in ASR and DTMF pressing

Many ASR ( automatic speech recognition) repeats the answer by the caller and asks to confirm by speaking YES or NO. While this may be a required step for validating user input for IVR developer, but it becomes irritating for a caller having to confirm every answer or repeating the same. It is not easy to press telephone keys using a mobile phone, so many people simply hate IVR for making them press DTMF keys!

Looks like IVR will not be able to come out of this!

5. Long Menu

Some IVR of call centers really provide long menus or long options to choose from! If there are 9 options in an IVR and if IVR plays them as soon as caller is connected, most probably, caller would disconnect his call before he hears the 3rd option! Many people hate IVR for making them hear options which are not required by them!

We can hope, with smart IVR systems and good VUI design practice, this hatred can be reduced.

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.