Interactive Voice Response (IVR) are often the first line of communication with a customer calling a business. Obviously, IVR’s are important…and one of the most common things customers complain about. We’ve assembled a list of useful tips to aid you in ensuring that your IVR is concise and clear, resulting in a more satisfied customer base when calling a business phone system.
- Keep IVR menus simple
Don’t make the IVR menus too deep or too complex. Customers don’t want to listen to a litany of recorded instructions. We recommend that the menu level (also known as a phone tree) should only be three levels.
- Inject some humanity
Customers respond better to a friendly tone rather than a robotic voice. Try having an employee with a cheerful voice record your IVR.
- Don’t have any voicemail dead-ends
There is nothing more frustrating than going through a gauntlet of menu prompts only to end up in a voicemail box? If a customer is calling after business hours, they need to be sent to a voicemail box as soon as possible to avoid any undue frustration.
- Menu prompts should be intuitive
“Press 1 for support” and then, “press 9 for sales.” The menu and call routing workflow should be logical and make perfect sense to callers.
5. Housekeeping is important!
As employees come and leave the company, or receive title changes the IVR needs to be kept up-to-date.
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