Should you automate your inbound support line?

Question

linux

Good day. Recently I was puzzled by the problem of a large number of calls that go to those support with the same type of problems, and I came up with the idea to make the incoming line look like a bank line with a choice of items on the phone, instead of communicating with techpod employees who, like everyone else, do not like people))) accordingly, I can roughly imagine how it should work, but I wanted to clarify if anyone has come across such a system in practice, whether everything works as intended and, most importantly, feedback from end users is positive or negative, and in general it makes sense to deploy it or not. Thank you all in advance for your replies. All the best)))

Answer 1

It's called IVR. The profit is that half of the applications will fall off due to the unwillingness of people to listen to the robot and get confused in ornate voice menus.

Answer 2

Users, in the vast majority, love it when a person answers them. Those who do not like voice communication with a person will initially choose other channels of communication.
But wandering through the voice menu items is almost always a challenge and a negative experience, especially if they are not lined up perfectly, or are pronounced slowly, or the item is not selected instantly until the end of the speech, or many other little things that can infuriate customers who without that they call with a problem.
Without good experience, I would advise limiting the IVR to a maximum of "press 1 to contact the sales manager, 2 if you want to contact the technical support engineer, 3 for billing" if such schemes are applicable in your organization.
If you really want to take the load off more or less qualified engineers, and not get a lot of negativity at the same time, look towards rented call centers, which you can issue a clear algorithm (what to find out from the client, what to offer to do, where to send further in such - in such and such cases). It's certainly more expensive than a stupid knee-high IVR, but far less painful for users (although it certainly has its share of problems).

Answer 3

You can analyze frequently asked questions and create a FAQ for users. And publish it on the corporate portal.

Answer 4

All telecom operators have IVR, you can take any and listen to how it looks.
For example, dial 611 operator Tele2

Answer 5

You need to look at how the same type of problems are solved.
For example, you have two levels of TP, but the dial-up number is one, respectively, the second line also begins to close calls that the first line could close, in this case it makes sense to transfer to the dial-up group of the first line, or send to Self service page.