Why Should I Replace My IVR with an IVA?

“Why should I replace my IVR with an IVA?” I’m starting to hear that question a lot from companies that I work with on a regular basis, so I’d like to address the question more broadly.

Customers want to be more than a number. They want companies to quickly recognize who they are, anticipate what they want, and solve their problems quickly. And they want this recognition to extend across any interaction they have with a business—whether it’s phone, email, chat, SMS, or social media.

Healthcare IT vendor Allscripts recently faced a significant and costly upgrade for its operating system environment. At the same time, its premises-based contact center system was up for annual maintenance renewal. Allscripts decided to take the opportunity to simplify contact center operations and move to the cloud—a move that was in line with its general commitment to cloud migration.

Just ask your Customer Service Representatives, "What is the toughest or most annoying part of your daily tasks?" The answer may not surprise you. You may find that your workforce is spending a large amount of time on things that are necessary, but repetitive. Frankly, these items do not add significant value to the business and, in turn, they diminish employee satisfaction. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is built to handle tasks that are slowing down your employees, as well as ones that are just very boring for them to do. A trusted partner can help you figure out where automation can add to the efficiency and effectiveness of your Contact Center or Back Office.

Recently, I was asked to speak about Public Cloud Services, and specifically, CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) during a training call. It was actually really good timing, because this has been a hot topic with vendors, partners, and customers. In those discussions, I find that there’s a lot of misconceptions about what CPaaS actually is. As mentioned, CPaaS stands for Communication Platform as a Service, but even that term can mislead you into thinking that it’s a much broader and more inclusive thing than it actually is.

Harvard Business Review published an article on “Reinventing Customer Service,” and I believe they—and one of our customers—are onto something.

When we think about the world of Contact Centers, the concept we’re describing is the ability to get someone’s request for something routed to the best person to handle that request. That “something” started out as phone calls, made by someone calling into a group of people (known as agents) who could answer that phone call and help the caller with their request.

This blog post was co-authored by Kathy Sobus (Senior Director, Customer Experience Strategy, ConvergeOne) and LumenVox.

This blog post was co-authored by Kathy Sobus (Senior Director, Customer Experience Strategy, ConvergeOne) and LumenVox.

The concept of customer experience is top-of-mind for every company with a contact center, and the need to actualize beyond self-service and voice has become urgent. There has been a tremendous push within this space to incorporate newer technologies like omnichannel and journey orchestration. This push has been defined by a desire to develop new opportunities for ecommerce and online marketing through the use of these technologies.