Interactive Voice Response System

Challenge

Interactive Voice Response [IVR] Systems are around for several years. However, with the advent of the latest technologies in IVR, artificial intelligence can be built-in IVR solutions. Such IVR deployments can predict customer’s purpose of the call through predictive analysis and present answers faster.

Our client, a high-tech services company, had price competition pressures to reduce cost. With low margins and skyrocketing customer support costs due to the high-tech nature of the product, they had to find means to further reduce the customer support costs. Following were key challenges:

• Reduce customer support costs
• Maintain/Improve customer satisfaction
• Phased implementation to access impacts of each improvements

Our Solution

Our professionals analyzed the business and technical challenges and deployed an IVR solution. workMETHODS built a predictive model to determine the purpose of the caller and presented answers faster. In 3 phases, workMETHODS implemented the IVR solution to provide incremental benefits. We integrated several back-office IT systems customer billing, ordering, provisioning, trouble ticketing, etc. into the IVR solution. This allowed customers to obtain information on their account, services, orders, trouble tickets, billing, etc. through IVR without even talking to an agent.

Beyond the stated requirements, we added a feature that allows customers to update Credit Card information through IVR. This enabled the client to collect the customer’s new credit card number before the CC expired with minimal effort. Thus, the revenue collection was also improved.

Our solution used a predictive model to determine the reason why the customer was calling and provide answer to the question. This reduced time customer stayed on the call and completed 30% of the requests before the call is transferred to the call center. Moreover, no manual intervention was required to maintain the data for the IVR system as the solution was tightly integrated into the back-end systems. Later, we added an important channel for the client to collect expiring credit card.