How Conversational AI IVR will Transform Customer Support in 2025
Summary
In this blog, we will cover the importance of conversation AI IVR in customer support and how implementing it can take your business to the next level.
Introduction
Keeping customers satisfied has become even more important in today’s fast-paced world. All businesses strive to deliver high-impact solutions to their customers. The smart solution to achieve it is by deploying conversational AI IVR
In traditional IVR, we need to press buttons (press 1 for “English, press 2 for “Hindi”). But conversational IVR has reformed the ways of speaking to agents. With conversational IVR software, customers can talk to agents just like humans.
It uses artificial intelligence to understand customer problems, emotions and provides them with perfect solutions. Botphonic provides a smart AI IVR solution to take your customer experience to the next level!! It provides fast, professional, 24/7 services to your customers.
How does conversational AI IVR work?
Here, we will understand how the AI IVR system works. Let’s break it down
1. Ability to learn continuously
The AI IVR system is a continuous learning model. Furthermore, businesses need to train it continuously.
In the same way that humans become smarter as they gain more experience, the model becomes more intelligent as it is trained repeatedly. How conversation becomes better day by day, let’s find out?
- Using Call data for training purposes: Conversation AI IVR learns by understanding the transcript to provide an accurate answer to all customer queries.
- Adaptive learning: It learns from real-time feedback of the customer and performs A/B Testing and analyzes which performs better. Based on that, it refines its prompts to give smarter solutions to customers.
- Feedback loops: It flags unsolved calls and checks how to make them better by learning from data.
Additionally, by implementing IVR in a call center, businesses can provide faster resolution to customers. Businesses can increase their call containment by resolving the queries on the first attempt.
2. Contextual Understanding and Intent Recognition
What exactly is this? Let’s understand it more. When a user asks a question, AI bots don’t just attempt to understand words, but also human emotions.
Let’s understand with the help of an example. If the user says ‘I am tired’, then AI bots will understand that they might be looking for a taxi or a hotel to relax. Intent recognition is understanding the emotions of the user.
Just like humans, AI can understand user emotions and give feedback based on that. Also, conversation IVR only understands sentences, but also understands the entire conversational flow. Suppose if the user says “ unable to open net banking”. In this case, AI will understand the context and provide some alternative methods to open the account.
3. Speech Recognition and NLP
AI converts the user’s conversation into text and understands what the user is trying to say. With natural language processing, the user understands the intent and gives feedback based on their emotions.
Let’s understand with the help of an example:
Suppose the user asks, “I want to inquire about my current bank balance?”
Speech recognition: Automated IVR will convert the entire conversation into text.
Natural language processing: It will help AI to understand the intent of the user, like a “bank inquiry”. Based on that, it will give a response like your account balance is $5000.
In short, a user can ask multiple queries to an AI call assistant. It uses NLP to understand customer emotions and provide feedback just like humans, also provides a natural and comfortable experience to the user.
Benefits of conversational AI IVR
I hope you got a clear idea about how advanced IVR works. Now, we will see some benefits of ivr call center system.
Customers do not have to follow any fixed menu option. Furthermore, customers can do whatever they want; there is no interruption in between. Suppose if customers say “ I want to talk to agents”. A conversational IVR system will connect the call to agents. As IVR dialer systems are flexible, customers can easily control the conversation.
2. Instant solution
A conventional AI IVR system can easily analyse the data of the customer. When a customer places a call, ivr system can easily figure out what the customer wants to ask. It reduces the waiting time of customers and evades the boring tasks of pressing 1, pressing 2….
Just like humans, an automated voice response system can easily understand customer queries like order status, billing details, pick up time, payment query, and provide a fast and accurate reply to customers. It minimizes human error, and mostly queries get resolved in the first call only.
3. 24/7 Customer support.
In the past, agents needed to work at night to resolve customer queries. Few customers place queries at night, and agents have to work at night to give an instant reply to customers.
With a VoIP IVR system, customers can ask queries even at midnight. If AI is unable to resolve the queries, it will schedule a call with human agents. Thus, customer don’t need to call multiple times in a day to get a resolution for their issues.
4. Multilingual support
One of the best features of conversational AI is its ability to understand multiple languages. Previously, businesses needed to hire agents according to regional location. They spent a huge budget to provide support to customers belonging to different regions.
But the good news is that the conversational AI IVR system has transformed the system. AI bots can easily understand different languages like English, Spanish, and more, and provide feedback to customers in their regional language.
It eliminates the task of pressing 1 for English, pressing 2 for Spanish. Customers can directly place queries in their language, and AI bots will provide them feedback in the language selected by customers.
5. Human-like Interaction
A conversational IVR system can easily understand the data of customers like your name, preferences, order details, and more. When user raises queries, conversational AI bots respond naturally, just like humans. They don’t provide robotic-type feedback to customers and try their best to solve their queries and escalate the issue to senior agents wherever necessary.
Suppose the user asks, “Where is my order?”
AI bots will give a response like “Hi Joe Harry, your order is ‘out of delivery”. You will receive it on or before the “ xyz” date. Please let me know if you need further assistance????
By implementing a conversational outbound IVR system, you can easily give a personal touch to your customers to build a friendly connection with them. According to a recent report, nearly 80% of customers love a personal touch in their conversation. You will usually find that people love communicating with you if you say their name.
Benefits for Business:
I hope you understand how conversational IVR provides immense benefits to customers. Next. We will see how the implementation of IVR eases the workflow of the business:
1. Ease a high-volume call scenario
During festive seasons, businesses usually face a high volume of calls. It was difficult for agents to handle every customer and tag the call at the same time. It is practically impossible for agents to manage a large number of customers simultaneously and provide quality service in such a scenario.
To overcome such a tough scenario, businesses should adopt conversational AI IVR platforms. Furthermore, businesses can easily handle a high volume of customer queries and provide quality feedback to every customer. There is no need to augment the team to handle such scenarios, and customers do need to wait in line.
No chaos, full control!!!!
2. Able to resolve queries on the first attempt.
In the past, agents were unable to resolve customer queries on time. Most of the queries are not opened and remain unresolved.
Conversational IVR system works like magic!! It can easily fetch the customer details and resolve their queries on time. If the user is angry or has complex issues, it will escalate the tickets to senior-level human agents. In this way, the user query gets resolved on the first attempt. Also, customer feels relaxed, as they don’t have to call you multiple times a day.
Happy customers = High revenue
3. Cost saving
A conversational IVR system can save your budget incredibly, from $10 to $0.10. Really a huge difference!!!!
Conversation AI IVR can easily handle the basic queries of the customer. Thus reducing 70 % of the budget on hiring agents.
In cases of complex queries, it escalates the issue to a human agent, so that the call volume is reduced, and big teams are not necessary to resolve queries, since 90% of queries are resolved by AI bots.
Thus, it saves the company budget and helps them to utilize it on other productive tasks.
An Overview of a Few Top Brands that Utilize Conversational IVR systems
I hope you understand the benefits of conversational AI IVR. Next, we will understand some use cases of top brands and how they implemented ivr system to handle tough scenarios.
1. Boat
Problem: The Boat faces issues in managing high-volume scenarios of customer queries related to claims, the warranty process. It was difficult for agents to provide quality feedback to customers. The boat company’s productivity was going down as customers faced a lot of issues, and agents took a long time to resolve these issues.
Solution: By implementing a conversational AI IVR system, they achieved:
- Less work pressure as 90% of customer queries are handled by AI agents.
- Faster response
- Saves budget
- Less burnout
- Reduces the manual repetitive work of agents.
- Customer satisfaction is enhanced by 87%
- Quality services
- Reduces waiting time.
- Better user experience
2. Bank of America
Problem: The Customer faces trouble in the banking process. They need instant and personalised support to overcome such situations. Agents struggled to provide support to large numbers of customers, as call rates spiked. They had difficulty handling such scenarios.
Solution: By implementing a conversational IVR system, they achieved:
- Instant support to the customer.
- 98% of queries are resolved by AI agents without human intervention.
- Provide smart financial suggestions to customers.
- Customer engagement has improved drastically.
- Better customer experience
- Fast and quality services.
3. Amazon
Problems: Amazon faces a lot of trouble in handling customer queries like “where is my order?”, “What’s the product return status?” and “I face a problem in placing an order”.
Solution: By implementing conversational AI, they achieved :
- 98% of routine queries are automatically transferred to AI agents.
- Reduces repetitive manual work.
- Stress-free environment for agents
- Quality feedback
- Reduces waiting time
- Improves customer satisfaction
Conclusion
I hope the above blog finds you useful!!! Conversational IVR is a modern solution that integrates AI and transforms the way agents engage with customers.
Customers are easily connected to agents without the end to press 1, pressing 2….
It provides a real and natural experience to customers, and their queries get resolved instantly. It provides cost-efficient solutions to businesses.
Connect with Botphonic for more details!!!!
