How Much Do IVR Systems Cost?
If your company handles a large call volume regularly, perhaps you’re looking for different ways to improve your service on the front-end and the back-end. While you may have some call center software which makes running your business easier, there are certainly a variety of upgrades and add-ons to consider when you want to improve your agents’ efficiency.
One such solution is interactive voice response, commonly abbreviated as “IVR”. IVR systems can do a lot for your employees’ workflow, thanks to how it automates commonly used phone operations to give agents more time to field more complicated customer requests.
What can an IVR system do?
An IVR system can lead to major dividends for your company when implemented properly. Put simply, IVR systems automate frequently utilized operations — this can increase your agents’ efficiency by decreasing the time they spend on common tasks. IVR systems may include features such as a prerecorded menu of voice-based prompts, automated phone menus, or dial tone based input.
From these options, interactive voice response systems can rout customers to the appropriate channel or agent, decreasing the need for an operator to do the routing. This can be quite the benefit for companies whose phone trees cover a wide range of services. For example, prescription companies that must quickly differentiate between a patient who’s calling to refill a prescription or a doctor calling to grant prior authorization for a new medication could benefit from an IVR.
IVR systems also helps enterprise companies get basic information that they might need to speed up a call once an agent has been connected to a live call. Most IVR systems are able to seamlessly integrate with your current call center software, ensuring that it’s possible for you to implement IVR without needing to retrain your agents.
By getting to the heart of the matter before your customers are even connected to an agent, IVR can play a pivotal role in increasing your agents’ productivity and your overall customer satisfaction.
How much money does it cost to implement IVR?
IVR system costs vary depending on the scale of your enterprise and what features you are looking to take advantage of. First of all, it’s important to know that utilizing IVR involves more than just the technology itself. Interactive voice response systems rely on a variety of components in order to run smoothly, including a network, database, and server.
These costs can total to thousands of dollars if all of your hosting is handled by a third party provider. However, some businesses with the proper IT staff and support may decide that hosting their IVR system internally is a worthwhile and cost-saving endeavor.
Other companies may decide to charge IVR users by the minute, while other companies choose to bill by bundling IVR with other pre-existing services. All of these options have their pros and their cons, so it’s important to consider your company’s overall operating budget before making a decision. While self-hosting might be an excellent solution for larger businesses, smaller companies and start-ups may benefit from knowing that their servers are in good hands from another party.
The interactive voice response system outlook is bright, and it’s never been a better time to implement IVR in your business. With the proper research and a comparative approach, you will find that the benefits of switching to IVR far outweigh the concerns you may have about implementing a new technology. Especially when you factor in the ways that IVR can improve customer satisfaction and agent productivity, many IVR systems wind up paying for themselves.