Friday Feature: IVR Collect Digit String

This post is part of our Friday Feature series where we look at a part of the NewVoiceMedia platform that you might not be familiar with but we think you might find useful!

At NewVoiceMedia we're passionate about helping you to deliver an amazing customer experience when your customers contact you. For your customers this typically means being able to speak to someone who can deal with their query quickly and on the first call.

So the mission for our Professional Services team is to help our clients get the right callers to the right agents as seamlessly as possible. One of the ways we can do this is using the IVR Collect Digit String applet.

"It sounds complicated!" says Luke Lihou from the Professional Services team, "but its a simple tool that allows the caller to enter a string of numbers that we can use to prioritise and route the call."

Typical strings of numbers might be an account number, a support case reference, or a job reference.

Luke has recently been working on implementing a call plan with a University. "We're using the IVR Collect Digit String applet to collect a student's ID number before they speak to an advisor. The first benefit is that the advisor sees the student ID on their screen before they start speaking so they can offer a more personalised welcome."

However, it is using this information to route and prioritise the callers that gives Luke's clients the best value, "We are able to use the student ID to dip into our CRM Lite service and route the student to the most appropriate department - overseas students, or post graduates for example. We get the caller to the right person quicker and cut out thousands of transfers."

When it comes to building a call plan with clients Luke will often ask if there are any commonly used reference numbers that could be used to route or prioritise calls to give a better customer experience for the callers:

• Order Numbers
• Shipping References
• Payment Notifications
• Job References
• Quote Numbers
• Account Numbers

If you knew these numbers what would you do differently to route them? Would you still get them to speak to reception, or could you take them straight to the person they probably want to speak to?

Luke discusses another of his recent projects, "We have a large distribution client with depots across the UK. By asking callers to enter a delivery number we can get them routed straight to someone who has the ability to answer questions about that delivery."

"Sometimes IVR can get a bad reputation, but if you use it wisely, and it helps your callers get to the right person, get their question answered, and off the phone quicker then we get some great feedback from clients and their customers."

Have you implemented an IVR that collects data and used that to route calls? What reference numbers would provide the best experience for your callers?

We hope you have enjoyed today's Friday Feature. If so, please subscribe to the blog and share with your network! If you have a suggestion for another Friday Feature that you'd like us to investigate here on the blog then just let us know in the comments section below!