IVRs, when properly optimized, have the potential to completely transform the way hospitality and travel brands communicate with their customers. By offering 24/7 availability, self-service options, and cost savings, you can greatly improve your CX and customer satisfaction. For many people, traveling is a source of stress, and it’s important to ensure that your customers can always communicate with your brand, without any unnecessary headache.
Cyara helps leading brands eliminate errors and delight customers with automated IVR testing solutions.
But there are many risks that can emerge throughout the development lifecycle and into the live production environment. In many cases, IVRs serve as the first point of contact your customers have when they call into your contact center. During this touch point, you must make sure your IVR is performing flawlessly, as a single defect can make or break your customer’s first impression of your brand and change whether they want to continue using your services.
By continuously testing your IVR, you can proactively identify and address defects before your customers are impacted, ensuring that they can receive any necessary information and effectively streamline your processes.
Improving Your CX with IVRs
Whether they’re traveling for business or recreation, all your customers expect and need rapid, efficient, and easy information and assistance, and your CX channels must be well-equipped to provide nothing less. A well-functioning IVR can make a massive difference in your CX offerings, allowing your brand to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve self-service options.
When you introduce IVRs into your infrastructure, your CX can improve in several key areas, including the following:
- 24/7 Availability: Whether a customer is trying to receive information on their flight in the middle of the night, or they’re trying to call a hotel on the other side of the globe past business hours, it’s critical that your customers can always receive information, even when your business might not have a human agent ready to take a call. With an IVR, you can ensure that your customers will have round-the-clock access to information, without having to wait for your agents’ shift to start.
- Self-Service Options: Customer feedback has shown that many people would prefer to leverage self-service options compared to speaking with an agent, with 91% stating that they would use a self-service channel. But, in addition to meeting customer desires for self-service options, IVRs can improve your team’s productivity and resource allocation. When customers complete repetitive customer service requests on their own, it allows your agents to focus on more complex queries and save valuable time.
- Personalized Interactions: 71% of customers have said that they expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. When it comes to the travel and hospitality industry, it’s essential to forge strong relationships with your customers to make them feel welcomed and excited to use your product or service. You can create customized greetings and menus for your IVR system, improving your brand perception and customer satisfaction.
- Cost Savings: Compared to live agents, IVRs are a cost-effective way to handle routine customer queries that don’t require additional human intervention or interaction. IVRs meet customer demands for more self-service options, while also saving your business a significant amount of money. While your agents can focus on higher-level customer interactions, your IVRs can be used for simple activities, improving your team’s productivity and requiring only a small investment.
- Seamless Interactions: In addition to the points above, IVRs can be designed and optimized to collect information and route callers to the right agents, ensuring that your customers are able to receive the help they need more efficiently than ever, without going through multiple transfers.
Overcome Risks with Automated IVR Testing
When designed and properly managed, IVRs can significantly improve your CX strategy by offering convenient, cost-effective interactions. But even though IVR systems have been around for decades, they must be continuously tested and monitored to ensure that you’re constantly delivering flawless CX.
For example, a customer is calling a hotel to cancel a room after their flight is delayed by a day and they don’t want to be charged for a room they won’t be able to stay in. During this time, the customer is feeling a lot of frustration from the situation and wants an easy solution to their problem, without any additional stress. However, when using your IVR, they are prompted to “press two” so they can be routed to an agent. But no matter how many times the customer follows the directions, a defect in the IVR causes the interaction to fail and the customer is unable to reach an agent.
In this example, an IVR should have made the interaction seamless. Instead, the customer is left feeling unsatisfied and is unlikely to choose this hotel the next time they need accommodation.
IVR testing is essential to eliminate the risk of your system experiencing defects like in the scenario described. With an automated IVR testing solution, you can easily identify and address potential issues by viewing the CX journey from the customer perspective. In the case there are any defects, such as routing issues, poor audio quality, or downtime caused by high volume call traffic, you can accelerate troubleshooting and issue remediation processes.
Conclusion
When your customers are trying to book their travel plans or receive information, it’s important to ensure that your systems are optimized to meet performance standards and customer expectations. Without the right testing strategy in place, your customers could be left confused and frustrated by the inability to get the information they need to enjoy their travels.
Cyara’s AI-Led CX Transformation Platform makes it possible to optimize your IVRs and ensure that your systems are always performing as designed with automated IVR testing solutions. Proactively address defects before your customers are impacted, schedule regular tests, and assure performance through every stage of the development lifecycle.
