Find your Moneypenny

Today sees the release of the latest Bond film, as ever it’ll be full of gadgets, action and of course cars. The Aston Martin makes an appearance in 11 Bond films and is one of the most iconic vehicles in cinematic history, yet even James Bond’s car needs a service every now and again particularly after running into an enemy!

From the Aston Martin DB5 featured in Goldfinger, complete with rotating number plates to the V8 that ends up in a wooden hut on an ice rink in The Living Daylights, it’s clear to see each of the cars featured in the films brought something new, whilst maintaining a Bond tradition. Yet most impressive by far must be the DB10 in Spectre. The car was purpose built for filming, with only ten being produced it’s never going to be sold to the public, making it the most exclusive Bond car of all time.

We think that you and your business should be as impressive and unique as the DB10, bringing us to an important question, are you an Aston Martin or a Reliant Robin? Does your company sound as good as it should? The Aston could have all the gadgets in the world but if it didn’t look the part it wouldn’t have the same impact. First impressions are valuable when it comes to your company, don’t settle for being reliable, be impactful.

According to Inbound Telephone Call Centre, 94% of marketing budgets entice a customer to call, yet only 6% of the budget is actually spent on handling inbound calls. Customers deserve to be entertained if they’re prepared to wait on the line to speak to your advisors, welcoming IVR Prompts and Music On Hold Marketing is proven to retain those waiting on hold, compared to those who are faced with silence.

Bond has Moneypenny, your customers could have an IVR menu. Being able to direct your customer’s calls as quickly as possible through simple and easy to navigate menus is far more efficient than leaving someone on the line or passing them from department to department. Bond has Moneypenny, why not include an almost virtual secretary to your phone systems with IVR recordings?

How IVR Has Developed

Despite not quite being where Back to the Future predicted we would be at this point in time (or yesterday to be exact), it’s fair to say that technology has developed at an astonishing rate, with some inventions that have completely changed the way we interact and socialise in modern day.

We often take for granted the ease of the taking a picture, making a call and checking our emails all on one device, when once upon a time you’d have needed three separate ones. Now we’re able to call a company and without even speaking to an operator we can get to the person we need.

The first electronic speech synthesiser was created in 1936, so speech recognition is nothing new. Following on from rapid developments and growth in the telephone industry the Bell System (a continuation of Alexander Graham Bell’s work) unveiled a system which could dial dual tone, multi-frequency audible tones, this was in 1962.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) was to change the way call centres and businesses operate and connect with their customers, serving as a bridge between the customer and the company to direct them to the most suitable place. Brian Bischoff (who was once a part of AT&T which eventually became the Bell System’s parent company) highlighted how the development of the internet hasn’t dented the popularity of speaking on the phone “Is Web traffic up? Yes, definitely. Is phone traffic down? No, not really”

IVR has developed along the way to become more accurate, less sensitive to background noise and much easier to navigate nowadays. There are several options available to those using IVR.

·Natural Language; After a prompt is read the customer responds as though talking to a human

Touch Tone; The customer can either make their selection by pressing a number on their phone or by saying the option they want

Directed Dialogue; This works by the customer using keywords to access the department they wish to speak to.

The aim for IVR has always been to improve customer service, refining the speed and ease at which customers can reach their desired department or contact. Technology has developed to allow IVR systems to detect and understand a range of accents, vocabularies and pronunciations. There’s less need to enunciate each individual word when prompted, meaning if an IVR system was to use natural language, the response of the caller could be an unbroken sentence of continuous speech.

IVR technology has developed so far that gone are the days of trying to book cinema tickets for a specific film and time and ending up with the complete opposite of your request. Gone are the days of even needing to speak to someone to pay a bill. IVR has developed so far that thousands of tasks are performed using the tech every day, from placing an order to tracking it, paying a bill, using a directory to reach a specific contact, checking schedules, the list goes on!

With the IVR industry spanning decades, improving rapidly and being available in our pockets in the form of Siri, Cortana and OK Google it’s no wonder the industry is worth £14 Billion annually in revenue and growing at a very healthy 10.7%!

Sources:

http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/CRM-Featured-News/The-Phone-Refuses-to-Die-48996.aspx

http://virtual-call-center.eu/blog/2015/06/12/history-of-ivr-interactive-voice-response-part-1

http://www.eckoh.com/resources/blog/journey-speech-recognition-ivr/

How to place people on hold

Yes it is as simple as hitting the hold button but, as always, there is a better way!

Over the summer we've been working closely with a call centre client to improve the experience for their callers. This included providing a report on the current system and offering a full solution to make customer service improvements, from rationalising the IVR routing scripts to recording the new IVR messages with a professional female voiceover; in addition we made a recommendation to train staff on how to place callers On Hold.

 Now stick with us here, yes it is as simple as hitting the hold button on the phone but how you prepare the caller before placing them on hold has an impact on how they feel and the customer satisfaction level. Think about it how often are you unceremoniously dumping someone on hold without any warning?

 It’s much better to explain (even apologise if the interaction isn't going well) before placing the caller on hold, something along the lines of:

 I’m going to place you On Hold, I’ll be back with you as soon as possible and won’t keep you any longer than necessary. Then place the call On Hold

When you return to the call: Hi [callers name] thanks for being On Hold, sorry to keep you.

Simple but effective and callers will appreciate it. Test it out. Get your teams together, brief them, then at the end of the week hold a team meeting and see the responses they have had.

How call centre metrics impact customer service

We all know the frustration of badly recorded IVR messages, a muffled at the other end of the line presenting a baffling array of department options then being placed on hold and listening to terrible music. Do we ever think about the people at the other end of the line? There’s pressure behind these calls for measuring and judging staff on several different factors that we often overlook.

Call centre staff usually have their work measured and assessed on their average call times with a customer, the amount of calls they make or take in a day and of course customer feedback. Are all these factors really contributing towards good customer service? Or are they merely ensuring the numbers at the end of the month are on target? What impact do these metrics actually have on a customer’s call?

In any work environment being assessed can leave you with a sense of self-doubt, even when you know you do a good job. Whilst it may be better for a company making or taking calls to have their staff abide by a strict max call time, this won’t necessarily benefit the customer or resolve their issue if an agent is rushing to get them off the phone. A three minute call doesn’t quite justify half an hour on hold.

Many large companies choose to outsource their calls to a call handling company, which can mean agents need to know the ins and outs of several businesses and be familiar with different call handling styles and queries. For example I had three calls in the same day last week from a telephone provider, from the same agent each time in an outbound call centre, demonstrating the desperation some agents face just trying to hit targets.

There are several areas call centre staff are rated by:

• Call handling times
• Sales tactics
• Feedback and surveys   

The issue is that, to really get to the bottom of where improvements need to be made in a company, calls need to be monitored by senior members of staff, yet their time is precious (they don’t have the time to wait on hold, unlike the rest of us, clearly) thus instead of listening in to their staffs’ calls they merely take the averages and turn this into statistics, which are often unreliable.

Call Centre Helper note the importance of realising what your customer wants and then using this information to make changes to the products and services you offer. This is where you see the real indication of what improvements are needed, rather than being focused directly on how staff handle a call and pressuring them to shave seconds off their call times. They note that “Monitoring from the caller’s perspective will give you an overall impression of what it is like to call your centre. It will demonstrate how frustrating it can be to wait in a queue and how friendly or annoying your voice messages really are.”

Perhaps it’s time to call your own company and experience a call from the customer’s point of view? If you think you could do with an update and improve your company’s image then contact us today for a quote for our professional IVR message solution. Maybe next time you’re put through to a call centre agent spare a thought for the real reasons they’re rushing and pushing!

The UKs worst call centres named and shamed by Which magazine

Last week we were at the Greater Manchester Business Expo. Once we’d explained what we do, we would repeatedly have people telling us we should contact a company they’d called recently, where they’d had to wait ages for their call to be answered, the music was terrible and once their call was answered the contact centre agent was disinterested and unhelpful.

In my experience the organisation I’ve heard the most complaints about is HMRC, I called them the other day and after stating what I was calling about the automated woman said “Garbage garbage, is that right?” I was then placed on hold for 45 minutes.

At the end of May Which revealed the UK’s most dreaded call centres. In a survey with more than 7,000 responses, there were three large companies which were placed at the bottom of the customer satisfaction scale.

Naming and shaming BT, TalkTalk and Scottish Power, the survey focused on several areas of customer satisfaction, from staff knowledge and politeness to waiting times and of course the dreaded phone menu system.

The areas the survey focused on are so important when giving your customer the right first impression, why would you torture them with terrible music and then let them be greeted by someone who is poorly trained in call handling?

The survey highlights several areas that the worst rated companies need to improve, but it’s not a bad idea for a company of any level to ensure that they’re doing the same thing to keep their customers happy!

Another survey carried out by Hello Operator noted that customers prefer unscripted calls, with 69% of those surveyed revealing that they would have an improved call experience if the agent they spoke to didn’t sound like they were reading from a script. Their survey also revealed how important manners are when speaking to a customer or potential client.

Can you say that you provide each of the following for your customers?

• Acceptable call answering times
• Phone menu clarity and ease of use
• Understanding customers’ needs
• Excellent Customer service
• Staff knowledge

In order to reduce the rage customer’s feel, take the first step by ensuring your on-hold marketing is modern, professional sounding and easy to use – call us today on 0161 850 3033 (we promise not to make you listen to awful music!) 

Is your IVR suffering from broken window syndrome?

In the early 1980s James Q Willson and George L Kelling introduced the world to 'The Broken Window' theory. 

The theory gives the example of a building with one broken window; if the window remains broken, more windows will suffer the same fate until eventually the building is broken into in its entirety.  This, Willson and Kelling refer to as the ‘norm setting’, which will signal all-out urban disorder! 

The same applies in business - if a guest arrives at a hotel to a hostile welcome from the front desk this sets the tone for the remainder of their stay. So when they arrive in their room to discover a cobweb, or when they are shown to a table in the restaurant and not given menus, they are much more likely to complain about anything and everything throughout their stay.

The same is true of your IVR system.  It's your front of house.  Your head housekeeper.  Your maître de. 

If a customer has to spend what seems like an eternity in a call queue listening to the same messages telling them their call is important, their call is valued, their call will be answered as soon as an agent becomes available…frustration builds, and before you know it their patience has just about run out. 

How can this situation be avoided? Well like any good hotel you should have happy, well-trained, informed and interested front of house staff.  Think more Cesar Ritz than Basil Fawlty.

Call queues are, more often than not, unavoidable, but at least if those queuing callers are listening to the right style of music, a voice over that puts them at ease, and informative, engaging messages, they might actually learn something about you instead of just being irritated by the time they speak to a human being! 

Sound like a good idea? Got a ‘broken window’ that needs fixing?  Then give us a call - we can mend your IVR system and avoid all-out caller disorder.

What makes a good IVR Script?

We love it when clients ask us this question because it shows they care about the customer experience. What makes a good IVR script is a very good question to ask because the language you use, the length of each messages and how you structure the overall call flow can make or quite literally break your callers experience.

IVR scripts should get right to the point and be as short as possible

Your callers want to speak to a human being as quickly as possible so writing lengthy IVR prompts that delay being connected to a real agent is only going to cause frustration.

Keep each prompt as short as possible while still giving the caller all the relevant information and try to reduce the number of options if possible to keep the caller moving through the IVR system.

The script needs to be congruent with your brand

This is all down to your use of language. Corporate companies such as insurance firms, banks and legal practices should most probably adopt a formal approach to instil confidence and reassure callers. Companies in creative industries might opt for a more informal style script to match their brand.

Think about what happens when/if the caller enters a call queue

You might think once a caller has been guided to a department that's the end of the script but what happens if the caller has to wait to speak to an agent and enters the call queue? What do they hear? Silence? Music? Their position in the queue?

At the very least you should have a music track that matches your brand to keep callers engaged and ideally you should have music and voice messages to give out relevant information. For example if a caller needs their account number remind them whilst they’re in the call queue so they can have all the information to hand.

For callers in a support call queue you can tell them where to find answers to frequently asked questions.

Taking the time to fully map out each call flow and IVR script will have a positive impact on your caller’s experience.

So there you have it our top tips to help you create a great IVR Script.

Still need some help? Then get in touch, call 0161 850 3033 we offer a free 20 minute IVR Script consultation.

Thinking of recording your own IVR Messages in-house?

Here are 5 points to consider before recording your IVR Messages in-house...

We get a lot of ‘how hard can it be to record our own messages…?’  Well, in truth, not only can it be hard in the sense of getting the right intonations and personality in your recordings, but it can also be hard on your company’s purse strings. Recording IVR messages in-house may seem like a good idea or a cheaper option, but like most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is!  You, or one of your valued employees, could have the best personality in the world, a first class drama degree, or just simply like the sound of their own voice, but we often find that once faced with the prospect of laying down audio in a recording studio, they don’t quite have what it takes to give the company the sound you’re looking for.

If you want to go down the route of using an employee to record your IVR messages here are five points to consider first:

1. Having a 'nice voice' is not enough; you have to know how to use it!

Professional voiceovers take years to hone their skill to enable them to know where inflections should be used in a script, while still sounding natural so the finished recording doesn’t sound forced. Unless the employee you’re considering using has this level of experience then the finished audio will not engage callers in the most positive way, so the finished messages are highly unlikely to be the same quality as using a professional voiceover.

2. How will the recording sound?

If you are going to use an employee to record your IVR Prompts, where, when and how will you do the recording? You could set up in a corner of the office or the boardroom but how much background noise is there? How long will it take to record every single prompt into the system then check over to ensure what has been recorded matches the script and is correct? When will you find the time to record? Wouldn’t you and or your employee be more productive doing your normal job, because it’s likely to take a while to record even the shortest of scripts, which brings us on to…

3. How long will the recording process take and what’s the real cost?

This fact is often overlooked. A professional voiceover will record an IVR script far quicker than an inexperienced wannabe! This means your employee could take all day to record a 500 word script correctly, something which a professional voiceover would have done in under an hour. This is compounded if you’re using a professional recording studio as you’ll be paying an hourly rate for studio hire. The longer it takes to get the script ‘in the can’ the longer the editing process will take removing all the fault starts or worse piecing together the best bits of several different takes, wastes precious studio time and costs money! So much so that the dramatic increase in studio hire costs can often outweigh the cost of hiring a professional voiceover artist in the first place.

Of course you can record at your premises but the quality will be nowhere near as good as a professional studio.

4. How often do you need updates?

Our professional voiceovers are in the studio most days so when a new IVR prompt needs recording we can usually turn it around in 24 - 48 hours. If your employee records in-house then if they’re not in the office this can delay important updates. If you’re using a recording studio, your employee will have to travel to a studio to record which increases lead times further.

5. What happens if the employee leaves the company?

At best they're unlikely to be willing or able to record new IVR prompts when needed. 

At worst they may ask for all the IVR recordings to be completely removed from the system, especially if they are moving on to a competitor.

This then creates a dilemma for you – to re-record or not to re-record? If you decide to take the plunge and re-record your entire set of messages, the aforementioned processes and stumbling blocks once more rear their ugly heads, and you will probably be left wishing you’d just bitten the bullet and recorded with a professional voiceover in the first place!

It’s also worth noting that voiceover work is probably outside the scope of an employee’s contract of employment so they may look for remuneration for their additional work.

We outlined the benefits of using a professional voiceover artist to record your IVR prompts in September last year click here to take a look.

If you have any questions or queries we’re always happy to discuss projects call us on 0161 850 3033.

Merry Christmas...

Merry Christmas from everyone at IVR Recordings

We look forward to working with you in 2015.

Optimising recordings for use on IVR Systems

An often over looked part of the IVR recording process is mastering the finished audio.

Once the session recording has been cut up and saved as individual files, it's essential that these files are checked for accuracy; this includes checking each file against the approved IVR script, volume matching each file and them optimising for use on the IVR system. 

How we optimise IVR Messages for use on your IVR System...

Volume Matching

We volume match each IVR file so you don't geT BIG CHANGES IN SOUND LEVel when played back on your IVR system. Ensuring volume consistency across the entire system makes the whole IVR experience a much more pleasurable one. 

File Optimisation

Matching your new IVR messages to the required file specification for your IVR system is a must, otherwise the voice prompts will be too loud, too quiet or even distorted when played down the line to callers.

We've worked with a wide range of IVR systems and as long as we know the file specification we can optimise your IVR prompts to sound their best.

If you want to hear the difference a professionally recorded IVR message can make to your system then request your free demo recording today.

by Steve Hindley you can find Steve on Google+