Marketing, sales and customer support are three central departments for any profit-oriented business’s operations. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) on mobile presents the opportunity for any business to improve these three departments.

IVR is a dialogue between a user and a computer via a telephone. It allows users to interact with an organization’s host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition. It is used to handle large call volumes and outbound calling for organizations. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is ideal for banking, retail, mobile purchases, utilities, and information such as for travel or news.

We have identified key ways that businesses can use IVR for their marketing, Sales and customers support to serve their customers with the finest customer experience using mobile.

1.      Virtual Receptionist

Automated attendants route calls and works together with the IVR system to allow callers to reach a particular live operator or handle requests automatically. Using both IVR and automated attendants, companies can route inbound calls to different departments and allow customers access different services if they do not wish to speak with live attendant but want information that is already contained in the system. A virtual receptionist can handle requests and routes calls to their respective destinations, reducing the need for a live receptionist, especially when there are several calls to handle at a time.

2.      Handle Information requests

A bank customer may want to confirm their account balance or a traveller may want to request flight information from an airline. Considering the volume of calls expected to come in to request such information, it is easier to allow IVR to handle the requests and provide such information.

3.      Receive feedback

There are always customers wanting to give feedback without the patience to type out messages or wait for their calls to be queued. IVR presents the perfect solution by allowing customers to call in and drop their feedback, recorded and even sorted by the computer for customer experience workers to go over from time to time. This saves your organization precious customer support Naira.

4.      IVR for subscription renewal and reorders

Utilities often require customers to renew their subscriptions alongside some other services. There are also those who want customers to be able to renew orders, especially when their information is already on the organization’s database. A simple call, a few keypad punches and the customers’ service can be renewed or re-ordered. IVR can also be used to send reminder calls allowing customers to renew directly from the reminder call thus improving chances or customer retention for your business.

5.      Surveys

Surveys are important to improve customer experience. Surveys can be conducted using Interactive Voice Response. Customers can call a dedicated number and answer yes or no questions by punching numbers. They can go ahead to explain their choice of answers that will be pre-recorded.

6.      Generate leads with call-in offers

Everyone likes freebies. We all appreciate discounts and getting a call from a vendor you know already, offering you wonderful freebies or discounts with the option to subscribe immediately increases your chances of taking the offer. Marketing research has proven that a lot of people are prone to impulsive on the spot buying when prompted by discount and freebies. IVR gives a business the chance to leverage this human trait and improve sales.

The fact that everyone has a phone, including uneducated people in rural areas, makes it easy for businesses to improve marketing, sales and customer support using IVR. In Nigeria, where there are several indigenous languages with a substantial illiterate population, voice is a great way to connect with uneducated customers in their indigenous languages.

HollaTags Voice API Technology allows developers create faultless call logic for any application, software, browser, or existing system and also attune it to their special needs, connecting your business to all mobile network carriers. We also build IVR applications for businesses to connect with our Voice API technology to improve marketing, sales, customer support and other special needs your business may require.