
1. Make sure your IVR is short and to the point. Make sure you choose the most important pieces of information to include, maybe think of the top five things your customer will need to hear to whittle it down to avoid overload, and as IVR helps to grow your business you can add to it.
2. Create an impressive and effective opening line to represent your business. Do not overload the customer with information and again, be straight to the point. The opening prompt can be the first impression of your business to a customer so you need it to be a good one.
3. If your IVR ends up having over 4 options or prompts, make sure you tell your customer what to expect because customers won't be impressed if they cant see the near future of their call, they could lose concentration and hang up.
4. Take advantage of the different options that you can offer your customer such as speech recognition or touch tone keypad response. This way, customers can use the option that they feel most comfortable with.
5. If you do involve speech recognition software in your IVR system, keep your answers simple. Things might get confusing if you use more than two words in the answers and always tell the customer their response options. E.g. Yes or No.
6. Your IVR needs to be consistent to avoid any possible confusion. Never use multiple words for one noun for example, as it is allowing for complications, and always stick to one language or tense.
7. You must consider using the barge-in factor for your customers to speed the IVR process up for them, but before you do so, consider your callers, who they are and where they will be. Then ask yourself, is it really beneficial?
8. When referring to you or your business in an automated call, it is always more personal for the customer if you use first person tense and say "I" instead of "we" or "the business".
9. Consider the aspects of the touch-tone-only factor. If you chose touch-tone-only your system will not accept any voice commands only keypad commands. This is down to what you think your customers will prefer but you should take some time to consider what will be best for you.
10. Always have an option for your callers to speak to a real person. People can get angry and frustrated easily if their question is not answered by the IVR so make sure they have an option to speak to someone to keep them satisfied.
IVR or Interactive Voice Response is a telephony technology where someone uses telephone with a keypad to interact with a database to acquire information, enter data into the database or simply to contact the right department of the company they are calling. Most people are familiar with day to day IVR such as bank balances, flight schedules, and movie show times when you call a certain number.
Elite Telecom can provide you an IVR in this way, or in a way where Elite Telecom offers bespoke IVR systems that will instantly benefit your company. Instead of using an outdated auto-attendant, an IVR system from Elite will allow you to answer 100% of your calls originally using an automated line which then eventually directs the caller to meet the correct agent depending on the needs of the customer.
An IVR system refers to the automatic voice intending to guide customers through a numerical number system, eventually to a solution to their problem or to an agent fit to deal with the specified call.
Customers do this by tapping in numbers on their phone’s keypad or speaking clearly into the handset. But whilst some companies vouch that it is a saviour for customer satisfaction, having the wrong solution for your business can result in quite the opposite.
IVR telephony has come under fire after a recent report by customer service firm Vocalabs, which stated that Apple, Dell and HP all have complaints regarding their IVR services.
Although, Dell and HP’s complaints were significantly reduced from the previous year, implying that the firms had worked on improving their IVR systems. It was Apple who received the most complaints, up 14% from the year before.
Most issues raised involved irrelevant or repetitive steps, or difficulty reaching an agent.
Top tips from Elitetele.com
We can work closely with you to offer your business a bespoke IVR system that ensures all calls are answered, and that customers are put through quickly and swiftly with no complaints about waiting times or faulty software.
We provide the following tips, before deciding and talking with us what your best solution can be it is vital that you think about the following;
Effective planning and analysing is the key to any successful IVR platform, do you have periods of high call volumes? If so we can help you plan for this.
Know what the purpose of your IVR system is – is it to eventually put them through to a specialised agent? Is it something that can be answered and dealt with by the IVR?

Know what you’re dealing with and how to deal with it – if you are dealing with more sensitive issues such as money or injury claims, offer to put them through to an agent straight away,
We don’t want to offer you customer’s too many options, not only will this annoy your callers by making them wait even further, some people just don’t have the mental capacity to remember nine fully-elaborated options.
If you're satisfied that we know what we're talking about, give us a call, and we can help find an IVR solution specifically for your business needs.
Speech recognition has slowly been replacing touch-tone IVR (Interactive Voice Response) as many callers simply press zero (aka ‘zeroing out) to get through to an operator. Microsoft in particular have dedicated a team to the creation of speech recognition technology.
Speech at Microsoft is the name of the new group, formed after the acquisition of Tellme Networks which has the largest voice platform in the world. Speech at Microsoft has already come up with and released certain innovations using speech recognition technology; a voice-enabled search version of Bing for mobiles, a new application for Windows 7 that allows users to control their computer via speech or touch and an outbound IVR service that allows customers to act upon alerts they receive.
Due to be previewed at TechEd Europe this November though is the all-new Voice Mail Preview which sends a text-version preview of voicemail messages to your mobile phone. So if you’re in a meeting for example, you can simply scan the text rather than have to excuse yourself to hear a voice mail. Now that’s what you call an innovative idea. It seems that these steps are just the start of a new era of communication.
IVR And Outbound Calling
Being infinitely more intelligent than Dialler systems, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) can be used to make outbound calls, not just deal with inbound calls. It does this by recognising different line conditions:
-Answer: The phone is answered and the automated voice says who is calling and asks them to stay on the line and wait.
-RNA: Ring No Answer.
-Answered by Answering machine: In which case, IVR can leave a message on the machine.
-Fax: IVR can leave a fax message.
-Divert: In which case, IVR generally abandons the call.
So although most businesses use IVR just to answer calls, it isn’t just a one trick pony!