Business Analysis Toolkit

Managers will always attempt to measure every single technology and application there is in the company. It is in this light that even phone systems should be measured for effectiveness and efficiency because this also has something to do with customer satisfaction. With this, many may be baffled why IVR KPI or Interactive Voice Response Key Performance Indicators are necessary in the scorecard for every technology used in a company.

Well, simply put, IVR is the real front liners of the call center industry. Customers who call in for their concerns do not get to customer service representatives right away. They have to map out the IVR first. Many IVR systems do not address the customers’ concerns right away because the way they are designed is not fit for what the customers need.  What normally happens is that the customers need to overcome a maze of choices and they get irritated before even having their issues resolved. So what does one need to measure in an IVR? What are the metrics that need to be involved to ensure customer satisfaction?

First, analyze your purpose. Ask yourself why the IVR was placed or used. It is in this essence that you will find the reason for measuring IVR effectiveness. If the purpose is customer satisfaction, then you have to measure customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction or CSAT is measured through surveys that are randomly sent. This means that a company should not send out surveys to selected customers who appear to be satisfied with the service. This may be done in an IVR system if the company has a database of their customers’ email addresses. Once a customer calls in and presses his identification numbers, then the machine or computers may start rolling out the surveys.

Second, one must also measure the timeliness of response of the IVR.  There are some IVR systems that are delayed in responses. When this happens, customers do not get what they want. Part of this is the accuracy of the transfer. Many IVR systems misroute calls. For example, a customer may be looking for a specialist in the account balance department but she gets transferred to the billing department.

Another issue that should be part of the metric is the ease of use. It is unfortunate that many people drop the calls even prior to selecting an option because the IVR system is deemed difficult to use. Ideally, IVR systems should only have five or six general menus. These menus may be broken down in another four or five sub-menus and so on.

Lastly, data availability should be measured. This has something to do with the resolution rate. There is no point giving the customers an option to find their balances if the account IVR systems are always down.  This metric may be broken down into resolution rate and IVR system availability rate. Resolution rate is of course equivalent to the number of resolved calls divided by the number of total calls.

To measure the IVR KPI effectively, metrics should be well defined. Also, the metrics should have a financial impact, or else it is practically useless in measuring something that does not impact the financial status of the business.

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