Rob McDougall, CEO of Upstream Works, was recently featured in a CX Dive article discussing the challenges of customer service calls and how companies often implement “speed bumps” to manage call volumes. McDougall shares expertise on the strategic implementation of interactive voice response (IVR) systems to alleviate the demand on live agents, primarily driven by cost considerations.
Initial IVR-based interactions get the more administrative tasks out of the way, such as names and account numbers. As McDougall said, having live agents go through these steps is not a good use of their time. The next set of IVR dialogue is typically geared toward pushing customers to other automated or digital channels, whether it’s a website or chat. These “speed bumps” deflect about 15% of incoming call traffic from live agents. 
To read more about how businesses balance the efficiency of call centers with customer experience, check out the full article in CX Dive, “Why calling customer service has so many ‘speed bumps’.”
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