IVR is an important tool for marketing, sales and support teams

Are you using IVR or Interactive Voice Response solutions to grow your business? If you work in a company where customers call you, there are dozens of ways to use IVR applications to improve marketing and sales, increase customer loyalty, and reduce costs.

What is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)?

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a technology system used in many industries, such as customer service or telecommunications, that automates interactions between a computerized system and a company’s callers. It collects information from callers and then directs them to the correct internal menu option or live support team member depending on what the customer needs.

How does IVR work?

When a customer dials a business phone number, the IVR system will answer and guide the caller by providing either button-press options to navigate through a menu or voice navigation options. It is important that your system provides both options because if a customer has a speech impediment, they will have the option of pressing numbers on their phone to navigate.

The IVR system is powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and can recognize both keystrokes and vocal responses. Once the system detects why the customer is calling, it can continue to receive assistance through the IVR system or route them to a live customer service representative.

What are the benefits of an interactive voice response system?

Interactive voice response systems can ease the phone traffic to your contact centers by answering easy questions and leaving more complex requests to a customer service representative.

They also reduce wait times and transfers by allowing your customers to self-direct to the best destination to meet their needs.

IVR Best Use Cases for Marketing, Sales, and Support Teams

Measure and improve customer support with phone surveys.

For call center professionals, phone surveys are an invaluable tool for measuring the quality of customer service. But do your customers want to take a survey? Yes! And not just when they’re unhappy.

According to the Invoca Buyer Experience Report, 66% of customers want to take a post-call survey regardless of their experience, and only 14% said they only participate in surveys if they’ve had a bad experience.

According to the Invoca Buyer Experience Report, 66% of customers want to take a post-call survey regardless of their experience, and only 14% said they only participate in surveys if they’ve had a bad experience.

There are two types of surveys that support professionals can set up: inbound IVR (surveys that you call in) and outbound IVR (surveys that can be used to generate leads over the phone for marketing campaigns.

One interesting way that many marketers use IVR is by making it an asset in their calls to action.

For example, instead of sending emails and running ads asking people to download information, you could ask them to call a special number to interact with your IVR system.

“Take our short survey to win an iPad,” or “Find out if your windows need replacing with this 3-minute analysis,” for example.

At the end of the call, your IVR could give them the option to speak immediately with a sales representative, and you could record all of their contact information and IVR responses for future marketing campaigns.

Evaluate phone leads before converting them to sales

Inbound IVR systems are ideal for evaluating phone leads. Your IVR system will ask callers the questions that you determine will work best to qualify them for your specific campaign.

For example, if you use a specific marketing model to qualify leads, you can ask questions to see if callers are truly ready to buy.

Or you can find out what questions your sales managers are interested in asking to qualify leads.

You can also use an IVR to route calls based on product line, business unit, or location if you have multiple locations, dealers, or local agents.

Simply ask a few simple questions like “Enter your zip code” to route to a location, or “Press 1 for sales” to keep service calls out of the sales call center.

Leads who score high enough on your IVR are passed directly to sales for an instant conversation.

You can even send them to a second IVR if that works better for your campaign—it’s the same principle you use when you include qualifying questions in your web forms.

But IVR results are better because leads passed to sales are immediately connected to the conversation.

Conduct market research to monitor buying preferences, habits and needs

Learn about your customers’ demographics and decode their buying preferences, habits and needs through phone surveys.

Phone surveys will help you understand your customers’ attitudes towards your industry, products, services and themselves. Market research not only helps you understand your current customers, but also your potential customers and growth opportunities.

Conducting this type of research via an IVR phone survey allows you to be flexible, as questions can be updated and changed as needed, and results can be viewed and analyzed instantly.

An IVR market research survey is more cost-effective than hiring a survey team and purchasing expensive equipment to conduct the research.

Manage incoming calls automatically with an IVR

Set up your own IVR to answer incoming calls, direct callers using interactive phone menus, and provide information such as account balances or business hours.

IVRs can replace live call center agents, helping your business cut costs and provide 24/7 customer service.