IVR Cheatsheet: Cool, With a Catch

Zachary McGeary | November 24, 2005, 12:18 PM

There was a great story on NPR yesterday about a gentlemen who appears to fancy himself the IVR Customer Experience martyr. One by one, he is working his way through the IVR systems of major businesses and finding the most direct route to a live human being. See his IVR cheatsheet.

More than anything this story highlights the frustration that consumers have with these automated systems, particularly in the offline channel where consumers expect to speak with a human being. Unfortunately, IVR deployments are on the rise: continued investment in Touchtone deployments will be coupled with the emergence of Voice-enabled systems.

The purpose of these IVR applications is to collect information about consumers to make the eventual live interaction most efficient. Not, as many consumers believe, to buffer the hold time that we are all more than accustomed to. So do these shortcuts actually save time? Well, yes, if all you want to do is speak to a live representative. But if you skip the information input steps and escalate directly to a live agent, you risk being routed to an agent that is not the most appropriate to handle the nature of the inquiry you have, and you have to take the time to give them the information that identifies you (e.g. credit card number, acct. number, etc.).

While I love the story, I don't really see much of an upside to this technique. In some cases, sure, this may help. But depending on how the business you are contacting operates, you may actually be compromising or even negating the potential for actually getting directly to the most appropriate agent or even time savings.