Crafting Frictionless IVRs with Journey Mapping Techniques

Introduction

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems have become a ubiquitous customer service channel across industries. IVRs allow companies to provide 24/7 self-service options and route callers to appropriate departments or agents. However, poorly designed IVRs with lengthy menus, confusing prompts and frustrating limitations can negatively impact the customer experience.

According to research, 91% of customers report being unsatisfied with IVRs. This is a major problem given that IVRs are often the first touchpoint in critical service journeys. If this initial interaction is difficult and impersonal, it sets the wrong tone for the rest of the customer relationship.

That’s where journey mapping comes in. Journey mapping is a technique used to visualize the customer’s perspective and needs throughout their interactions with the company. Taking a journey mapping approach to IVR design ensures the system aligns with customer expectations across the service experience.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover:

- Key principles of journey mapping

- Steps to build an IVR customer journey map

- Using personas to represent diverse caller needs

- Translating the map into impactful IVR enhancements?

- Ongoing optimization of the IVR journey

- Case studies of top brands leveraging journey mapping for IVR success

With an intentional focus on mapping and optimizing the IVR journey, companies can provide seamless, effective self-service options resulting in higher containment rates, lower costs and happier customers.

Journey Mapping 101

Journey mapping allows organizations to view customer interactions from the outside-in. Instead of internal workflow processes, the journey map focuses on how customers navigate services and what they feel during each step.

Some key principles of effective customer journey mapping include:

- Cross-functional collaboration - Bring together team members across departments like marketing, product, IT and customer service to contribute unique insights.

- Customer-centric mindset - Adopt the customer’s perspective throughout the mapping process. Empathize with pain points and moments of delight.

- Big picture orientation - Visually map the entire end-to-end experience, noting different phases and transitions.

- Touchpoint focus - Identify specific interactions that shape the customer perception, whether human, digital or other channels.

- Emotion mapping - Call out how customers likely feel during different stages, both positively and negatively.

- Persona alignment - Develop representative personas of key customer segments and tailor interactions to their needs.

- Co-creation - Validate the journey map with actual customers through interviews, surveys or workshops.?

- Iterative process - Continuously update the map over time as customer behaviors evolve.

When applied to IVR design, these core principles ensure the system is optimized from the caller perspective at every touchpoint in their service journey.

Building an IVR Customer Journey Map

Here are the key steps to build an impactful IVR customer journey map:

1. Define the journey scope

First, determine the service process and customer segments your IVR map will focus on. For example, new account activation for millennials or billing inquiries for business accounts. Choosing a specific scenario and persona will make the mapping process more targeted.

2. Gather customer insights

Next, collect data on current customer IVR experiences through methods like call recordings, IVR analytics, customer surveys and agent interviews. Look for pain points and bright spots to understand how to improve interactions.

3. Map IVR touchpoints

Now diagram the sequence of IVR touchpoints from the customer perspective. Key stages often include initial IVR greeting, authentication, menu navigation, self-service transactions, queueing and agent hand-offs.

4. Note customer emotions

Add indicators of how customers likely feel during each IVR touchpoint. Frustration from lengthy menus, confusion from vague options and delight from fast authentication are common emotions.

5. Identify pain points

Call out parts of the IVR journey causing frustration, difficulty and negative experiences. Common IVR pain points include too many menus, jargon-heavy prompts and lack of early agent transfer options.

6. Brainstorm improvements

Based on insights gathered, generate ideas to optimize each touchpoint to create smoother, more satisfying IVR interactions aligned to caller needs.

7. Prioritize enhancements

Determine high-impact IVR improvements to tackle first based on expected ease of implementation and positive customer impact.

8. Build IVR personas

Develop representative customer personas for priority segments that capture motivations, needs and IVR expectations. Align IVR design to persona preferences.

9. Validate with customers

Test proposed IVR journey with current customers through feedback sessions. Incorporate insights into further optimization.

10. Rollout and iterate

Launch IVR updates in iterative phases. Continuously gather customer feedback to refine the journey map and enhance the experience.

Designing IVR Personas

IVR personas are fictional, representative profiles of key customer segments that capture their unique perspectives. Developing personas based on real data ensures the IVR aligns with needs of diverse callers. Include details like:

- Biography basics - Age, location, occupation, lifestyle etc.

- Service history - Tenure as a customer, past service interactions

- Goals and motivations - Reasons for contacting the company

- Attitudes and expectations - Personality traits that shape preferences

- IVR pain points - Specific frustrations experienced

- Self-service needs - Services sought through the IVR

- Channel preferences - Desired options like agent transfer

Here are some sample IVR personas for a cable TV provider to illustrate the level of detail:

Persona 1: Jeff the Busy Professional

- 35, accountant in San Francisco, tech-savvy, values efficiency

- Customer for 2 years, intermittent issues streaming sports

- Motivated to quickly fix streaming so he doesn’t miss game

- Expects smart virtual agent with natural language understanding

- Frustrated by touch-tone prompts, lengthy menus, holds

- Needs to troubleshoot streaming issue via IVR self-service

- Wants to speak commands or quickly connect to human agent

Persona 2: Diane the Grandparent

- 68, retired teacher in Rhode Island, not comfortable with tech language

- Customer for 20+ years, calls annually to make plan adjustments

- Wants simple menus, clearly spoken prompts, agent assist

- Frustrated by fast talkers, complex menu options, lack of shortcuts

- Needs to downgrade cable package to save money

- Prefers touch-tone menus, speaking with live agent

These personas represent very different IVR needs. The IVR experience can then be tailored - through content, menu design, language etc - to align with personas.

Translating Mapping into IVR Enhancements

The end goal of building an IVR customer journey map is using those insights to drive tangible improvements in the live IVR system. Here are some strategies to translate journey maps into impactful caller experience enhancements:

- Simplify menus - Streamline lengthy menus and remove redundant options based on usage data. Offer shortcuts to popular destinations.

- Improve prompts - Re-record using natural language. Avoid overuse of company jargon. Set expectations for wait times.?

- Personalize based on data - Tailor menus and prompts to match known customer attributes like product ownership.

- Embrace natural language - Adopt speech recognition allowing callers to speak requests in own words.

- Prioritize agent connections - Make self-service secondary. Allow caller to immediately press 0 for agent.

- Develop smart virtual agents - Leverage AI to understand context and intent, handle common requests.

- Add visual cues - Send SMS links or images to user’s phone to guide IVR experience.

- Monitor emotions - Text analysis or biometric voice analysis to detect frustration during IVR. Flag for agent follow up.

- Offer call backs - For long waits, give user option to receive call back instead of waiting on hold.

- Integrate across channels - Maintain context across IVR, web chat, mobile app and support center.

No element should be overlooked when optimizing the IVR journey. Even small tweaks based on mapping - a friendlier greeting, clearer hold messaging, agent name announcement - can collectively improve satisfaction.

Continuous Optimization of the IVR Journey?

The work doesn’t stop after the initial IVR overhaul. Journey mapping and enhancement is an ongoing process as customer needs and expectations evolve over time.?

Set up systems to continuously gather IVR customer feedback through:

- Post-IVR surveys

- Speech analytics across call transcripts

- Monitoring social media complaints

- Periodic customer interview sessions

Set up regular reviews to revisit journey maps and iterate based on the latest insights. Conduct frequent minor A/B tests to optimize elements. Watch key performance metrics like containment rate, transfer rate and customer effort score.

Major factors driving IVR experience improvement over time include:

- Integration of new technologies - adopt AI, natural language processing, biometrics

- Lower tolerance for hassle - shorten menus, remove frictions, speed time to human agent

- Expectation of omni-channel - coordinate IVR with broader customer service ecosystem

- Demand for personalization - leverage data integration and AI for tailored interactions

- Higher quality expectations - overhaul legacy components, focus on professionalism?

The IVR landscape will look very different in 5 years. Only companies continuously optimizing the journey map will provide the effortless, efficient experiences customers demand.

IVR Journey Mapping Case Studies

Here are two real world examples of top brands using journey mapping principles to transform their IVR customer experience:

Case Study 1: Coffee Chain

With mobile ordering and drive-thru pick up gaining popularity, a coffee chain recognized shifting demands. Customers were frustrated spending too long on hold inquiring about order status or speaking to baristas about customizations.

The coffee chain developed an journey map from the perspective of the always-in-a-hurry customer. They noted key moments of anxiety around order status communication and drive-thru delays.

Based on the map, the coffee chain introduced a new mobile-integrated flow. Customers can now enter their order number to immediately check status without hold time. For drive-thru customers, the IVR uses geolocation to determine store and seamlessly forwards callers to that store location.

These innovations - driven by mapping the customer-centric journey - reduced average handle time by 22% and boosted customer satisfaction scores.

Case Study 2: Pharmacy

A pharmacy embarked on an ambitious effort to optimize IVR customer journeys across their 8,000+ store locations. Each location had disparate legacy IVR systems making it difficult to standardize offerings.

Using customer insights, they journey mapped IVR experiences for key personas like the harried parent and elder prescription refiller. Personas wanted quick access to pharmacy department, store hours and easy transfers.

The pharmacy introduced a cloud-based IVR system providing consistent, personalized menus across locations. The centralized interface makes it easy to quickly update IVR flows based on changing customer needs identified through surveys and journey mapping workshops.

Since launch, the pharmacy has continually refined the IVR based on persona alignments. They are reporting 70% higher self-service containment through their optimized journey.

Conclusion

Journey mapping delivers a powerful outside-in perspective that is often overlooked when designing IVR systems. Instead of siloed technical builds, companies can craft IVRs tuned into emotional caller needs at each touchpoint.

By deeply understanding motivations and pain points of priority customer personas, organizations can transform the IVR experience from frustrating to frictionless. Maintaining agility to continuously optimize based on changing expectations is critical for IVR success.

With the right expertise and tools, journey mapping gives companies the ability to provide seamless, satisfying self-service critical for attracting and retaining customers in today’s experience-driven economy.