Let’s be honest: when it comes to customer service in an omni-channel world, people only want to talk to someone as a last resort.
In short, they want fast, easy experiences — and why shouldn’t they? Tesla drivers can summon their parked cars at the touch of a button, and anyone with a smart phone (all 2.16 billion of us in 2016) can watch virtually anything we want, at any time, entirely on-demand. It’s a world of quick, instant experiences, and the bar has already been set.
But most Interactive Voice Response systems (IVRs) haven’t caught up to these high expectations yet. Years of investments in digital channels like Web, mobile and social have left many IVRs – now the most popular channel for support escalations — lagging far behind.