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IVR Usage Can Reveal Valuable Caller Data

By TMCnet Staff

The U.S consumer may be spending roughly $240 billion online per year, but that doesn’t mean all customer engagement should stay online.

While consumers make purchases online, many still prefer to learn more about products and services through the phone. A recent study by ResponseTap polled 4,000 consumers in the U.S. and the U.K and discovered that nearly three-quarters preferred to speak with a contact center agent before making a purchase, according to a recent Business2Community article.

The research also showed that 64 percent of consumers get frustrated when they can only interact with a company online. Takeaway: The phone still matters.

If this is the case and businesses need to continue focusing on the calling side of the contact center equation, however, many managers may be wondering how they can get the pinpointed tracking benefits of online interactions via phone interaction.

There are several ways, and it starts with using a click-to-call button on a company’s website.

Click-to-call buttons are less about making it easier for consumers to call, and more about bringing tracking technology to calling. With a click-to-call button, data about the caller can automatically be forwarded to the contact center so agents can be ready for the call, and so the calls can be routed to the appropriate agent.

Some of this data can include the keywords that the customer used to arrive at the call, which pages have been viewed, and information such as where they are calling from and if they’ve put anything in their shopping cart already.

There are other ways to track callers, too.

IP and ISP tracking software can pinpoint the exact geographical location of a customer, giving contact centers information about language preference, local needs and demographic profile information.

Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) also can make it possible to implement services like Instant Messaging, Web page click-to-dial and voice-enriched e-commerce, depending on how the customer prefers to communicate.

So even if calling is still one of the best ways to communicate with consumers, that doesn’t mean businesses need to forego the tracking benefits inherent in Web communications.