Thoughts from the Cliff Dweller

Sometimes the Best Call is No Call at All.

A few years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to work with one of the leading network equipment manufacturers. Their products were (and still are) leading edge and the brand is well respected by todays consumer.

So as a result, they received many technical calls related to connecting and running local area networks. So many that the company had a hard time keeping up with their Service Level commitments.

What I did notice was that many of the questions that were asked could have been answered if the customer had visited the company’s web site. That in it self was no great surprise, what did surprise us was the fact that customers were never informed where they could go to get the information before speaking with a Technical support agent.

So working with our client we put up IVR scripting that told our customers that most of the questions they were going to ask had already been answered and that those answers could be found on the companies web site - right away.

The moment the message was posted, 12% of all the calls we received dropped off once they heard the “get your answers here” message.

12% is a huge number of calls and a significant cost saving to the company.   Not bad for a couple of well placed sentences in the IVR. 

Take a minute and call your own company. Does your IVR assist your customers in directing them to alternate sources of information? 

Clive…

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