Companies avoid IVR surveys because ‘customers don’t like them’

A recent survey has highlighted some of the reasons why companies won’t implement IVR surveys to gather customer feedback.

Over one-third of the companies surveyed by customer experience management company ServiceTick claimed that IVR was ‘too difficult to implement’ and a further one-third said that ‘customers don’t like them’. Other reasons given included ‘too expensive’ (18%) and ‘can’t action results’ (15%).

By contrast, those companies using IVR surveys identified a number of benefits. They saw it as an effective way of ‘improving call centre performance’ (29%) or of ‘improving call agent performance’; 23% thought IVR surveys could ‘improve brand perception’ but only 13% saw it as a way of ‘enhancing profitability’.

When asked what functionality they would most like to see in an IVR survey the main demands were for real-time analysis of feedback, actionable data and speech-to-text capability.

Kevin Goodings, MD of ServiceTick, commented: “It’s worrying to see that there is still a divergence of views about the value of IVR surveys. While some companies embrace them as a way of building brand perception, others won’t use them for fear of upsetting their customers. It’s also clear that there is still a misperception of what IVR surveys are capable of; people are not up to speed with the latest IVR technologies offered by companies like ServiceTick which can transform customer feedback into profit through real-time analysis of data and customer alerts generated by voice-to-text services.’