Apr 23 2012
Category: Call Centers, Technology
Tags: automation > customer service > IVR > live operator
Several studies have been done comparing the pros and cons of having live agents man your call center vs. using automation techniques such as IVR and more recently, speech recognition. Typically, studies sponsored by vendors of automation technologies would highlight the benefits of an automated call handling system, whereas there are other studies that highlight the improved customer service that live agents can offer. This post is an attempt to take an impartial look at this debate.
Often, the decision to go ahead with automation is motivated by cost considerations rather than customer satisfaction. However, if you want your call center to be successful, it is imperative that you use both automation and human agents in the right combination, leveraging the strength of each option. For example, if your speech recognition engine cannot identify what a caller is trying to say after a few attempts, then the rule base should automatically transfer it to a live agent, rather than the speech application trying again and again and ending up frustrating the caller. Also, any unusual requests should be ideally handled by an agent whereas standard transactions such as balance enquiries or address change requests can be handled by IVR and speech recognition.
Today, there is no denying that automation technologies have improved by leaps and bounds. But it's all about cutting costs right? Not really. Saving money is great, but access to information is even better! Automation offers you benefits beyond cost cutting as most technologies have built-in metrics and analytics, thereby providing you with near real time data on the call center performance as well as the quality of the technology and customer satisfaction levels.
Callers are increasingly happy to be serviced by an easy to handle IVR menu for simple self service tasks rather than wait eternally for a live agent to handle his or her request. Imagine calling up your credit card company just to get an account balance and having to wait for a live agent when simply entering your CC number will pull up your account information quickly and circumvent the live operator process. People really don't mind automation when it's convenient. This is especially true for the younger text friendly generation. The younger generation is especially comfortable with automated call handling, thanks to smart phones and applications such as Siri. The flip side of this is the fact that callers expect your telephone answering services voice recognition engine to provide the same or better accuracy than Siri. If you have ever used Siri and then saw those new commercials with Zooey Deschanel making Siri look easy and intuitive, it's really not (check out that disclaimer at the bottom about some sequences shortened. I suspect they are referring to "I don't understand your request" responses over and over again"). They are not bothered about the fact that the voice recognition engine in a personal device needs to be trained to respond to a single voice, whereas the one in a call center would need to be trained to recognize and accurately respond to multiple accents and several different ways of framing the same service request.
Regardless of whether you opt for a predominantly IVR based system or a human agent based system, one thing that must be given top most priority is training. You may be asking yourself if IVR systems need training. The answer is an emphatic YES! If you have ever seen how IBM developed their Watson program to go up against the top Jeopardy players then you know what I'm talking about. Countless hours went into "training" Watson to be a better player by understanding the games interactions, or at its most basic, gainign a better understanding of human thought. A poorly configured IVR system, or an untrained agent can be equally frustrating. In the case of speech recognition engines as well as agents, training has to be an ongoing process.
The traditional thought process of considering a call center service as a cost center is slowly giving way to looking at it as a means to offer enhanced customer service which indirectly leads to customer loyalty and consequently higher revenues. Studies have shown that in most industries (telecom, hospitality, airlines, to name a few) the average spend per customer is directly proportional to customer loyalty. Chances of successful cross selling and up selling also improve with time. It is also well known that it is less resource intensive to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. In other words, the longer a customer has been with you, the more profitable they are. Thus it makes sound business sense to keep customer satisfaction as your call center's primary aim.
Ultimately, callers want to have their service requests attended to and resolved in the least possible time. This should be the primary metric that the call center aims to achieve.
There is one thing that you get with a live agent that you will not get from an IVR or a speech recognition application, no matter how sophisticated and fine-tuned it is – the ability to think on your feet. In the final analysis, it is this one characteristic that can spell the difference between satisfied customers who obtain first call resolution and unhappy, frustrated customers.
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