Timely information and timely action can earn a lot for any stock trading company or may lose for the lack of it! With advent of online share trading systems where anyone an buy/sell shares online using a PC with internet connection, lot of automation has taken place increasing profitability to any share trading companies.

Presently, many share trading companies maintains dedicated call center to serve their clients where many of the incoming calls are just to check their portfolio positions for the day! Also SMS ( Short Messaging Service) is being used to update both share trading tips as well as portfolio status to registered numbers.

IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System can be used to perform regular enquiries like portfolio status, stock market update etc. which will free up human agent in call center for other tasks to assist actual stock trading assistance to callers.

Both Inbound IVR and outbound IVR can be deployed by any share trading company to automate timely information update to its clients as well as provide their portfolio status on demand.

1. Inbound IVR

Inbound IVR, where caller will make a call to the IVR number, can be used to provide the following updated and rea-ltime information :-

a. Portfolio Status
A quick information about the current portfolio status is what everyone wants to know at the end of the day or weekly to help plan then about buying or selling shares or doing other stock trading. Getting updates on IVR is much easier and its available on any phone both land-line and mobile.

b. Quick Stock updates
A caller can also hear latest stock exchange index, top performing companies, top loss making shares etc.

c. Call transfer to human agents
IVR can provide option to transfer the call to human agent intelligently like while announcing the top earning shares so that it may persuade them to do any transaction.

2. Outbound IVR

Outbound IVR can be used same wa as inbound IVR as described above,e except that the all would be initiated by IVR to the client.
The only difference is, the outbound call can be triggered when some important announcement or alert ha to be sent to the client. Some sudden fluctuation of share price owned by the client may trigger a call to him informing about the fluctuation and then IVR can immediately transfer the call to human agent for further assistance.

Voice call alert are more reliable as it can be ascertain either the call was received by the called party or not in time. In SMS alert or EMail alert, the client may not open the SMS or email in time which may cause him to miss the important update.

Outbound IVR is also useful to provide clients with timely stock tips which are very urgent in nature.

So, if you are in share trading business and if you are not using IVR, then most probably you are going to lose out to your competitor who is using IVR!

What is IVR customisation ?
Normally, an IVR application is designed and developed as per requirement of the customer by IVR companies. But they have ready-made modules tested and readily available for quick development. Normally, the modules like, telephone interface, ring detection, caller ID detection, database connectivity etc. are always readily available. Also many people use RAD tools for IVR customization where they simply implement call flow required by the customer. So IVR customising can be described as implementing call flow of the IVR application as desired by customer using existing IVR related software modules.

In fact, after RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools have been introduced, IVR development have become just IVR customisation. Many IVR functionality, modules are available in RAD tools ready-to-be-used. It is not easy to develop an IVR application from scratch, as it involves auxiliary knowledge and experience about telecommunication switches, telecommunication standards and protocols, speech recognition, TTS.

While RAD tools are easy and quickest way to developed customised IVR application, but it may not suitable for IVR customisation which needs to interact with existing business processes or existing software which generate various data to be provided by the IVR. For example weather update, complaint ticket generation, complaint status update etc. Apart from these kind of complex and very sophisticated IVR systems, RAD tools are excellent development or customisation tools for IVR solutions.

One important aspect which many people overlook is writing script of voice prompts and recording of voice prompts professionally. IVR systems are to be deployed to be used by normal people for availing services, solutions from it. IVR system interacts with its user ( caller to the IVR) through voice prompts. Any mistake in voice prompts may render the IVR useless. For example, if the voice prompts announces, “to know your complaint status, press 1, or press any key to end the call.” Now imagine if IVR is coded to recognize 1 for disconnecting the call and any other key for asking further information to retrieve complaint status!

So, while customising IVR application, one must write script for voice prompts and record them with professional voice artists. Without this, IVR system may have the best of the hardware and most well coded software, still IVR system will not be useful to its intended users.

While customising an IVR application, one should think about future enhancements. Many times, one finds out that existing codes can not be used for enhanced services, features and everything needs to be done from scratch. This not only delays the process of upgrading IVR systems, also it become costlier.

While integrating with third party application or software, direct interaction with their database should be avoided. If you do so, any changes made by them would require you to make changes in your code too. So I think HTTP URL is a very good approach where you send few parameters for exchanging data from third party application. This will ensure that your IVR code need not be changed even if third party database is changed.

IVRS is supposed to be force multiplier in the filed of customer service in a call center. But is your IVRS increasing customer satisfaction or has become an irritant to your caller ? Here are five Tips to make your IVRS a force multiplier in your call center.

1. CRM Integration

You must integrate your CRM with IVRS! Without integrating your IVRS with Call center, you can not say really that IVRS is improving customer service.  Integrating with CRM gives IVRS the features like identifying the caller with his all information and customer does not need to enter his identification details. This will shorten the time to serve the customer and customer will also stick to IVRS.

2. Allow Call Transfer to Human Agent

At any point of time, customer must be given option to speak to a customer care human executive! Many a time, caller knows that he has to speak to human agent only to explain his requirements or problem, and then if he does not find any option to speak to live agent, he might simply turn to your competitor. This is specifically true for general purpose call center or customer care. One must do a fine balance with call screening with live agent call transfer.

3. Never Ask Customer Details Twice

In many IVRS, it is observed that customer has to enter his details for using IVRS and and then when he is transferred to a human agent, he needs to repeat his customer details again to the human agent! Never ever do that! This will irritate the customer to no end and your customer care center may turn into customer irritation center. It may happen also when customer goes back to IVRS main menu and then he may require to enter his customer details again, never do that.

4. Precise and To the Point

Be precise and to the point in presenting any information. Also make navigation menus short, easy to navigate.  You should keep an option to transfer the call to a human agent at every level as well as go back to main menu. Long menu will scare away the caller and he would tend to forget the options.

5. IVRS Information

Always keep an Help Option the main menu. It should have information about the IVRS itself and what customer can expect from it and what not! Also give caller the approximate time for connecting to live agent! I would suggest you not to play prompts like “Your Call is important to us, please be online while we are connecting your call to customer care officer.”, this kind of message if repeated many times, may infuriate a caller, specially when the caller has a complaint.

The above list of five is not exhaustive! But the bottom line of most effective use of IVRS is : Customise your IVRS as per your business.