Top 10 Best Practices for Optimising Post-Call Interaction Surveys Using IVR (Part Two)

In our previous blog, we shared 5 best practices for optimising your IVR surveys to improve post-call interaction, increase revenue, and decrease costs. Check them out if you haven’t! In this blog we’ll explore five more.

6. Provide a recorded message of the CEO explaining the importance of the feedback

If your CEO is willing, include a short message from him or her at the beginning of the survey, letting customers know they are listening and value customer opinions. This can help customers understand the value of their feedback. It does not have to be the CEO—it could be someone else in leadership, or, if possible, a well-known public person.

7. Use speech analytics to analyse the agent-customer conversations

Perhaps the best way to analyse open-ended customer feedback is with Speech Analytics, which categorises what customers say during calls and makes it much easier to analyse customer calls to find trends—rather than listening to each individual call.

You can create categories based on what you learn from customers (products, processes, website, etc.) and separate that data from comments about the agent (e.g., “they were rude” and “they didn’t solve my problem” or “they were amazing!”).

And don’t stop at using speech analytics just to understand post-call interaction issues. Look also at what customers say during the call.

In 3 Ways to Transform Your CX Strategy with the Voice of the Customer, we see the following.

“Surveys are … essential, but with contact centres typically conducting thousands or even millions of conversations a day, think of all of the rich indirect insight these discussions (whether with a chatbot, virtual or real-life agent) can yield about all aspects of omnichannel CX [customer experience]. VoC [voice of the customer] solutions use speech and text analytics to mine those interactions for emotion, satisfaction and competitive intelligence.”

8. Work with your data architects to create connections

Consult your internal data architects to ensure your IVR survey is configured optimally. There may be opportunities to create connections between IVR survey results, supervisor evaluations, customer relationship management (CRM) software, omnichannel surveys, speech analytics and more.

Here’s an example. If a customer leaves a low score about an agent in the IVR survey, and that agent gets a low score in their supervisor evaluation, the CRM can send the customer an email survey asking for more details about their experience. This can help resolve any lingering customer issues and get much more actionable data with which to coach the agent.

It is also essential for call centre leadership to understand what is happening in their centre. Work with the architects to create automatic reports by department, location or other category with data from the IVR surveys and other tools that are distributed automatically to leadership.

If the feedback is about another part of the business — such as the website or a product — it should be quickly routed to those teams. Set up business rules to distribute the feedback automatically based on speech categories, or have people review the non-call centre feedback and distribute it on a daily or weekly basis.

9. Act on information quickly

The quicker you act on the insights, the more useful they are to your business.

If the feedback about an agent is negative, direct it to their supervisor immediately so they can coach the agent as needed. You also can use Quality Management software to incorporate the IVR survey data automatically into agent evaluations. If the survey results are positive, they can be used to train future agents.

Another benefit to taking care of a customer after a frustrating experience is that it can actually make them more loyal.

In Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer, Chris Denove and James D. Power IV of J.D. Power and Associates wrote that “not everyone who has a problem is destined to give a low rating. The determining factor isn’t whether you had the problem, but how the hotel made you feel about how it resolved the problem. For example, it the hotel scores a ‘perfect 10’ for problem resolution, overall satisfaction for the entire stay is more than fifty points higher than for guests who never had a problem in the first place!’” So, positive or negative, acting quickly on feedback is extremely important in keeping your customers satisfied.

10. Measure the impact of your program in dollars

People pay attention (particularly executives) when they know how much a survey costs, and how much money it saves in the long-term. So, tie your survey to dollars.

For example, see if using survey results to improve coaching leads to reduced average handle time (AHT). Or, assess whether the results improve first contact resolution. As an example, Brandon Roundtree, manager of commercial reporting and analysis for
Carnival Cruise Line said, “Using Verint Enterprise Feedback Management for post-call surveys helps us make sure that each guest is getting the best customer service during that first contact. By solving first contact resolution, we can stop repeat calls, which goes a long way toward ensuring customer satisfaction.”

You could look at the increase in first contact resolution over time and the money saved by avoiding repeat calls to show a return on investment for the surveys.

If you are an existing Verint customer and you would like to learn more about fine-tuning your IVR surveys, please reach out to your account team.

Verint offers two options:

– Verint Interaction Experience (formerly EFM-IVR and Customer Feedback [CF]) for those leveraging Workforce Engagement Cloud and/or the Verint Experience cloud.

– IVR survey for Verint Voice Self Service customers. Choose the option that makes the most sense for your existing software configuration. Additionally, you can work with our consultants to design the solutions if you would prefer not to do that in-house.If you are not yet a Verint customer, please contact us with this form.