Intermedia Debuts Easy-IVR for Interactions

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are critical to every contact center. Anyone that’s ever called customer support knows the drill. They can be very helpful tools for customers, providing quick answers to questions or getting them to the right agent. On the backend, they are extremely valuable to contact center operations for routing and enabling self-service. The problem is that IVR has traditionally been hard to build and modify. Intermedia is breaking down the complexity with its new feature, Easy-IVR. We’re excited to share this new technology with the world.

Old School IVRs

Many contact center teams understand the opportunity and challenges of IVRs. On the one hand, they know that they can improve customer experiences and reduce churn with the right configuration. Conversely, the challenge has mostly been around deployment and making changes. There was so much friction to adjusting IVRs; many contact centers didn’t take on that battle.

In most cases, the process involved highly technical roles. Specialized knowledge and expertise were necessary. As experts in the telecom and Contact Center Software as a Service solution (CCaaS) space, we recognized the issues. In fact, our internal research found that as many as one-third of deployment delays were because of IVR setups. When we recognize an opportunity to improve, we take it, and plans began forming to develop something that fits our philosophy of “crazy simple.”

Easy-IVR: How It Works

Simplicity is everything. Technology doesn’t have to be complex to work. We know this and appreciate it. Easy-IVR uses an intuitive wizard-driven tool that enables users to customize it for their specific business needs. In looking at the cause of those deployment delays with IVR, we also deduced that approximately two-thirds of IVRs would fit within the Easy-IVR framework.

The wizard tool is user-friendly and includes steps along the way. You can certainly go with standard IVRs, but Easy-IVR also gives you the freedom to be creative..

Our partners and customers will be able to design an IVR from scratch or make changes to an existing one in as little as five minutes! That’s a monumental shift in time savings. Our partners will enjoy additional control and value in the deployment process, cementing their status as a trusted advisor to those they serve.

Key Features

We designed Easy-IVR to be simple but also robust with features. The tool is part of your Contact Center admin portal and offers a variety of streamlining attributes, including:

• Revise on the fly by moving forward or backward.
• Choose from pre-defined schedules.
• Specify off-hours and on-agent behaviors.

It’s a huge time-saver for any busy Contact Center. Once you go through the setup, the IVR is immediately live. However, if the tool sees any errors, it will highlight them and prompt you to address them.

You’ll also gain more control with these features:

• Assign unique names to IVRs so that you can differentiate between multiple ones.
• Define language: English, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, and French are available.
• Record then choose welcome and menu prompts as well as on-hold tracks.
• Select a background music track from a library.
• Determine menu routing options to correspond with a caller’s keypad, including queue, blind transfer, or voicemail.

How Users Can Benefit from Easy-IVR

Beyond just making the process easier, you can gain additional benefits by using Easy-IVR. These apply to both end users and Intermedia partners.

• Manage the flow of customer communications better.
• Increase first-call resolution with more defined IVR options that connect customers with the right agent.
• Boost sales with the assurance that every call is answered.
• Minimize churn by reducing customer frustration and elevating customer support effectiveness.
• Administer your own IVR setup and support, reducing IVR tickets.
• Accelerate the onboarding of CCaaS by provisioning IVR independently.
• Enhance the customer experience by customizing flows and making changes quickly should new events occur.
• Make it easier for customers to get support and get in touch, a huge differentiator for any customer-centric organization.

The New, Easier Way to IVR

Intermedia is happy to bring this new service to our customers and partners. We know it will make a substantial difference for any organization running a contact center. Technology should support and enable, not overcomplicate. That’s the story with Easy-IVR. Learn more about how it works and how our Contact Center solutions can help your business.

Rob Oscanyan

Robert Oscanyan is a Senior Director of Product Marketing at Intermedia, where he focuses on helping businesses improve their customer experience using Intermedia's award-winning cloud communications solutions. Rob has over a decade of experience spanning market research, messaging, and elevating the voice of the customer. In his free time, he constantly creating new adventures with his wife, seven kids, and a small army of pets.