Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Most Popular Uses for IVR in Retail Sales

By David Sims
TMCnet Contributing Editor

If you want to see how IVR can be used well in retail sales, one way is to look at a popular product and see what the core functionality is.? Voxeo's Prophecy IVR platform and Prophecy IVR hosting products have been used by retail sales enterprise customers and VoiceWorks Partners to create and deploy IVR applications.

According to company officials, these are the most popular uses: Auto-attendant-many customers use an IVR-based, voice-driven auto-attendant to answer their main office and store numbers. A voice-driven auto-attendant lets callers connect with the desired party simply by speaking the name of the person, store, or department they want to reach.

Employee and customer notification-most enterprises are looking for something to deliver time-critical information to employees and customers. IVR allows instant delivery of time-critical information via outbound calls to any desk or wireless phone. This is important during last-minute shift schedule updates or sale announcements.

Call center automation-this is the big one, of course. Enterprises are increasingly looking to reduce the cost of customer service and support centers via automation or by moving agents off-shore. IVR call center automation applications can deliver cost reductions that even surpass savings from off-shore operations.

Customer surveys-retail vendors use IVR to automatically survey customers by phone after purchases, deliveries, or services have been performed.

Inventory and reporting-retail enterprises use IVR to enable remote vendors, stores, and employees to report inventory and sales information from any wireless phone.

Bill reminders-enterprises selling post-paid products and services use IVR solutions to place automatic bill reminder calls to customers both before and after their bills are due, reducing the enterprise's past due accounts receivable overhead with almost zero incremental cost.

Store locator-retail vendors with multiple locations find that automated store location, hour, and direction IVR applications let employees focus on in-store customers and give callers more accurate and timely information.

Order status-with an order status IVR application, retail vendors who ship products by air, ground, or mail can automatically place calls to customers as orders arrive or ship, and enable customers to check on the status of orders 24 hours a day, seven days a week.