Guess what? Customer experience is important. Lots of people will even tell you that we are in the customer experience economy these days. More and more companies find themselves now competing primarily on the experiences they deliver to their customers rather than their brand or their product or even price. So, if that’s the case, then why do so many IVR (Interactive Voice Response) teams get treated like order takers rather than a strategic partner in the customer experience economy?
Key takeaway: To effectively measure IVR customer experience, organizations should track containment rate, number of steps to task completion, time to complete tasks, and customer satisfaction surveys, similar to how web teams measure clicks, time on page, and conversion rates.
The fundamental problem
The fundamental problem is that there isn’t a standard way to measure the quality of an IVR experience. Unlike web analytics, IVR customer experience lacks standardized measurement frameworks, making it difficult for organizations to benchmark performance. Customer experience in the IVR has always been treated as a very subjective thing. Good or bad customer experience is based on the style and preferences of the designers, not empirical measurements. When empirical data has been applied, it ends up being things like containment rate, which may actually be counter to the customer experience being delivered.
Papercuts are the small, incremental negative changes that gradually degrade customer experience over time without triggering immediate alarm. In the IVR context, these accumulate through well-intentioned additions that slowly erode the overall experience.
Companies do apply traditional CSAT measurements or offer a brief satisfaction survey at the end of the IVR experience, but that feedback is often more about the success of the interaction than the experience of completing it.
The fundamental problem is that there isn’t a standard way to measure the quality of an IVR experience.
Other communication channels have a plethora of metrics used to gauge their performance, if not the experience they deliver. Take the web, another self-service channel, for example. They use click stream, time on site, and conversion rates to measure their effectiveness. They don’t simply wait until the end of the transaction to ask the customer if they are satisfied. Would similar metrics work for your IVR? Tracking even simple things like number of steps (sort of like the number of clicks on the web), or the length of time it takes to accomplish a task (which equates to time on page or click stream in the web world) would provide a really good starting point. Without these types of metrics, you have no standards, and no bar to measure potential changes against. The result can be the death of your IVR customer experience by a thousand papercuts.
Collaborating with the business
The lack of these types of metrics also fundamentally changes the conversation that IVR groups have with their business counterparts. Instead of a meaningful collaborative discussion on how to solve business needs in the IVR, the business simply treats the IVR group as order takers. Someone from the business decides they want to add some new functionality to the IVR. So they go to the IVR group and tell them to make that specific change. OK, what will that change do to the customer experience? Maybe nothing, or maybe it will improve the experience, after all, we are giving the customer more information or a new function they can use to complete their own service. How can that be a bad thing? But what if your customers were just barely tolerating your IVR up to that point and now they won’t anymore? What if that additional function is the one that is going to extend or confuse the customer’s IVR experience to the breaking point?
An example I came across recently was a customer that had 10 different steps in their IVR before the caller could request any information from the system at all. The team that managed the IVR wasn’t even aware that was the case. When they looked at that information directly, they knew immediately that it was a bad customer experience. Best practice suggests limiting IVR interactions to 5 or fewer steps before task completion. But not one of the people on the IVR team could tell me how they got there. It was likely just one mandated change on top of another that had come from the business over the preceding few years. And those changes were added without any empirical measurement system to evaluate the impact of those changes on the customer experience, they were just all included until they got to the point where customers would be 10 steps in before they could do anything.
What metrics should you use to measure IVR customer experience?
What’s the solution? Managing to a comprehensive set of CX metrics for your IVR, similar to what you do for your web, allows you to gain the insight you need to make decisions that will improve your CX. It’s not rocket science and you can take baby steps. Start with what you have and build from there:
Essential IVR CX metrics:
- Containment rate – The percentage of callers who complete their task within the IVR without transferring to a live agent
- Number of steps to task completion – How many menu selections or inputs required to accomplish a goal (aim for five or fewer)
- Time to complete task – The total duration from call start to task completion
- Customer satisfaction surveys – Post-interaction feedback on the overall experience
| IVR metric | Web equivalent |
| Number of steps to task completion | Clicks to conversion |
| Time to complete IVR task | Time on page/session duration |
| Containment rate | Conversion rate |
| Satisfaction survey | Post-purchase survey/NPS |
Having a quantifiable measurement system is key to improving your CX, and also having meaningful conversations with the business. You can start to help the business to evaluate the changes they want to make against a standard and provide better guidance on what that will do to the customer experience—the customer experience of thousands or even millions of customers that virtually walk through your front door every day. That is the type of guidance you need to provide.
Measurement can also help elevate the IVR in other ways. The IVR is often left behind in investments in CX, due in part to its legacy of being an isolated telecom infrastructure function. Meaningful, quantifiable information that can be equated to the quality of the customer experience you are delivering, is key to bringing your IVR group out of the shadows and turning it into a strategic customer experience delivery partner.
Cyara provides solutions that can deliver the type of customer experience data about the IVR that are the basis of that type of meaningful, quantifiable information. Let us help you move your organization into a more strategic customer experience role.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no standard way to measure IVR customer experience?
IVR customer experience has traditionally been treated as subjective, based on the style and preferences of designers rather than empirical measurements. This lack of a standardized measurement framework makes it difficult to evaluate the true quality of the experience being delivered.
Why is containment rate an insufficient metric for IVR success?
Containment rate may actually work against the customer experience being delivered, as it only measures whether a caller stayed in the system rather than whether they had a positive or successful interaction. Relying on it alone gives an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of IVR performance.
What metrics should IVR teams use to better measure customer experience?
IVR teams can track the number of steps it takes to complete a task and the length of time required to accomplish it. These simple, empirical measures provide a meaningful starting point for evaluating and improving the customer experience.
How can poor measurement lead to a degraded IVR experience over time?
Without an empirical measurement system, individual business-mandated changes can accumulate unnoticed until the IVR becomes frustrating for customers. The article describes this gradual decline as a “death by a thousand papercuts.”
How does having CX metrics change the IVR team’s relationship with the business?
A quantifiable measurement system allows IVR teams to move from being order takers to strategic partners, helping the business evaluate proposed changes against a clear standard before they impact customers. This gives the IVR group meaningful influence over decisions that affect millions of customer interactions.
How can IVR teams use CX metrics to secure greater investment?
The IVR is often overlooked in CX investments due to its legacy as an isolated telecom function, but meaningful and quantifiable data about the customer experience can help elevate the IVR group into a recognized strategic role within the organization.
