Oil and Energy

The interactive voice response unit (IVRU) should be the call centers best friend. It should be valued, carefully tended, and frequently evaluated and upgraded. It should be finely tuned to meet customer’s needs so it can fulfill its main mission of handling routine calls and freeing up costly positions for the tougher calls. Instead, the IVRU is treated as old technology—a second-rate, half-forgotten telephonic accessory. Nearly half of energy utilities upgrade their IVRUs less than once a year. And as our research shows, many companies apparently never listen to the whole system all the way through.

This research shows that typical IVRUs in the utility industry may handle 20 or 25 percent of incoming calls without referring customers to a live agent; a few IVRUs handle up to 50 or 60 percent. (This percentage is known as a "take-rate.") Other industries, including retail and financial services, claim from 40 to 70 percent take-rates, according to Ascent Group research. It is believed that the overall lower-than-average usability of utility IVRUs that was found in this study goes a long way toward explaining the lag in their adoption by customers.

The highest rating assigned was a 4, on a 5-point scale. Even these "good" menus were plagued by serious problems, including hang-ups, dead ends, and long silences that made the researchers wonder if they had been disconnected. In addition to providing valuable benchmarking information, this report also offers specific and practical suggestions for making IVRUs more usable and more beneficial to the utilities that put them in place.

This is among the first independent reviews of utility customer service interactive voice response units (IVRUs). This report explains the findings and recommendations regarding the usability of electric and gas company IVRUs.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c18330

Laura Wood
Senior Manager
Research and Markets
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