How IVR Adds to Growth of Hotel Business in Different Ways

The common concept of IVR is a system for customers to call and try to find a measure of self service. IVR solutions can do more if they are properly designed and adapted to the ecosystem in which they must operate. The hotel industry is a case in point. It has various levels of activities according to the stage of a customer’s journey. From the business perspective too, it has variety in the ways business is conducted. AsteriskService IVR solution both sides and helps hotel business to grow in different ways.

The hotel business

There are thousands of individual hotels in cities across the world and there are hotel chains with branches in different countries. From the business angle the IVR can play a significant role in promoting growth.

• A central service provider, for example AirBnB or OYO, can link together thousands of individuals hotels into a common booking system through the hotel IVR tailored for this purpose. Member hotels can carry out quite a few routine operations through the IVR and the service provider saves money they would spend on employees.
• Hotel chains can automate some procedures through the IVR for their staff members and customers with Hotel IVR solutions from Asterisk.
• Hotels normally have arrangements with agents in which case too the IVR comes in handy to allow agents to check availability of rooms and tariffs.
• Hotels can implement Asterisk IVR Payment Gateway to facilitate inbound payments from customers and from their agents.

Tied to the CRM the IVR delivers a lot of information and helps in carrying out routine tasks without human intervention. Since it is available 24x7 such tasks can be available at all times.

The customer journey

Asterisk Service Hotel IVR Solution proves invaluable in providing assistance to customers at all stages of their journey.

• Inquiry stage: Hotels do not have to deploy personnel to answer routine queries about rooms, tariffs and other details. These are fed into the CRM and the smart IVR brings up information on demand, 24x7. Customers in the US, for example, can easily find out about hotel rooms and tariffs in Australia.
• The Booking stage: Once customers are satisfied they may progress to the next level, which is the booking stage and use the IVR for choosing a particular hotel in a particular location and booking a room of their choice for one or more days. Hotel IVR with IVR payment gateway may be used at this stage to facilitate immediate payments if a hotel stipulates advance payments.
• Before reaching the hotel: Customers can dial the IVR number to get directions to the hotel. It makes them happy to know they have full support available 24x7.
• In the hotel: While inside the hotel a different set of options come into play in the IVR. Customers can make use of the hotel internal services IVR option to ask for room service, laundry, catering, transport, wake up alarm, prepare the bill and even make payment.
• On checking out: The IVR helps hotels to get valuable feedback from the guest once he has completed payment using the Payment IVR. It helps hotels to find out gaps in service and improve quality that will lead to more business and repeat customers.

Asterisk Service offers custom IVR development services for hotels across the world to help them fine tune services and grow business.

Source: https://ivrsystemdesign.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/how-ivr-adds-to-growth-of-hotel-business-in-different-ways/

How to Choose the Best IVR System for Hotels & Resorts

Choosing IVR for hotels is much the same like buying a product. You look at the specs, performance and reviews before zeroing in on a vendor of IVR solution. Then again you have the analogy of the way nobility used to buy Rolls in the days gone by. They would get the chassis and have custom coachwork. You could say that choosing hotel IVR is almost similar. The underlying open source framework is the same. Little touches of customization and implementation distinguish the IVR’s performance. It is necessary given the way hotels and resorts operate.

Double sided IVR

There are two sides to operations of the hospitality industry. One is external relating to inquiries and bookings. The other is internal related to guests in residence and internal actions like a guest setting a wake up alarm, ordering food or a taxi using the hotel IVR system. The two need to operate in separate channels but unified in a CRM at the backend.

Visual IVR

The way visual IVR is gaining in popularity is an indicator of just how much better it is compared to the audio prompt based IVR. Whereas a caller would have to listen to the audio prompts in sequence and thus waste time while frustration mounts, the visual IVR solution presents the entire menu at a glance on the caller’s smartphone screen. He can directly tap the service he wants.  If the customer wishes to speak with a human agent, all he has to do is tap instead of following a labyrinth of myriad key presses. Think just how delighted the customer would be with this type of self service.  

Smartness

Let us admit it. IVRs are pretty dumb. That need not be the case for the hotel IVR system you choose. Find the right vendor that offers AI embedded IVRs that can sense mood of caller, recognize language and even offer natural language translation as well as text to speech and speech to text and you will love to use the IVR as will customers. The hotel industry needs to address customers calling from any part of the world in any language. An IVR that recognizes language, or at the very least recognizes the country from the country code prefix can greet callers in the language of that country. Customer experience matters and the day is not far off when, instead of just a series of responses, your caller will be talking with a near humanoid IVR. For the present, however, you may have to make do with bots.

Periscope to the future

If AI will make inroads into IVR to improve it then there will also be AR and VR down the road. A customer calls and wishes to know about directions or about the room and amenities. The IVR gives him a walkthrough, or places him on a map. While that is still to come, it is comforting to know that IVR systems available today can give him details of the room, tariffs and driving directions.

The vendor is just as important as the IVR solution you choose because of emerging technologies to be implemented in the time to come. Constant support, evolution of the IVR and possibly hosted service should count when you choose IVR.

Source: https://www.asteriskservice.com/how-to-choose-the-best-ivr-system-for-hotels-resorts

IVR Development Trends in 2019 | Asteriskservice

The term Interactive Voice Response leads one to believe that there is a high degree of interaction. So far, callers have to listen to pre-recorded messages and then their interaction is limited to just key presses. It is time wasting and, in many instances, does not serve the caller’s purpose due to limited menu options. Happily, trends for 2019 indicate that IVR could change for the better.

Artificial Intelligence in IVR

• Artificial intelligence integration in IVR development leads the transformation. Instead of a rigid hierarchy of trees and branches, we have flexible and more human-like options that callers will like.
• AI and language capabilities lead to better interaction since the system can identify caller’s language and switch to the same language. If the call must lead to a live agent, then it goes to one with that language capability. Natural language processing feature could speed up the process from the customer perspective and take him straight to the resolution point instead of labyrinthine key presses that can be so frustrating.
• IVRs could evolve to a point where callers interact with intelligent chatbots. The experience is nearly similar to talking with a live agent.

Asterisk Service has an edge in intelligent IVR deployments since its parent company is engaged in Artificial Intelligence and Asterisk IVR solutions are AI infused.

Visual IVR

No, visual IVR in an IVR solution yet does not mean you can interact with a live person. Instead, it is a system of displaying menus on the screen, possibly a touchscreen smartphone. The screen will display the entire tree and sub-menu structure making it easy for a caller to jump straight to the option of his choice. This can be particularly helpful in payment IVR where he has to tap on the payment mode and jump straight to payment using that mode.

The Visual IVR can also have spin-offs such as skill based routing and exchange of documents. The visual IVR alone should help convert more callers to take the route and resolve whatever issues they have without human intervention. Visual IVR also opens up possibilities of tutorials, access to help pages and videos.

Call backs

The most frustrating thing about IVRs is that companies usually play a promotional message before the menu is presented which is the start of innumerable key presses. Ultimately, when they choose to speak to a human agent he is on another call. IVR implementations could see that option of call back presented right at the start. Caller can do something else until the agent calls back.

Users can adapt IVRs

The dynamic IVR should become more popular since it lets businesses structure and restructure their menu and sub-menu systems according to feedbacks from users.

Hopefully, in the years to come, IVRs should get to a point where callers actually love the facility and Asterisk Service leads with its AI powered intuitive IVRs.

Source: https://ivrsystemdesign.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/ivr-development-trends-in-2019-asteriskservice/

6 Tips for Creating a User-Friendly IVR System

That IVRs are beneficial for business enterprises is beyond doubt. However, its implementation could lead to caller frustration and customer churn. Enterprise clients may blame the IVR developer but it takes two to tango. Better understanding will help developers come up with a user-friendly and functional IVR that delivers delight instead of rage.

1. Shortcut to human agent

The IVR system can look like a wall to some customers who simply do not like the lengthy process of key presses. One way to keep them happy is to provide an option for them to be able to speak to a human representative in the first menu itself. Callers are more likely to use IVRs if they know they can get through to a person on the first attempt instead of being stonewalled with set responses.

IVRs are put in place to reduce load on human agents and because they are available for customers 24x7. This also means when you offer a human agent contact option, the IVR should have some findme/follow me feature ported to mobile so that the caller does get to talk to a person about his problem.

2. Identify caller and guess purpose

Smart delivers go beyond the mechanics of IVR solution to incorporating CRM into the ecosystem and endowing it with some Artificial Intelligence. AI certainly helps:

• The caller can be identified by name by referring his number in the database
• His purpose can be identified based on his past interactions with the company
• Sense his mood and respond appropriately or transfer call to human agent.

3. Prompt response

IVRs work on a series of prompts and responses. Say, a caller has followed a prompt. It is for the IVR system to initiate the right response as fast as possible instead of putting the caller on interminable hold.

4. The fewer the options, the better

It is tempting to design a menu that has anywhere from 1 to 9 options but by the time the system enunciates these options the caller has forgotten which number relates to which option. The best way is to include four options in a tree and branch structure. Callers remember. It takes less time.

5. The more important ones first

Which caller will like to wait until option 9 is stated, which is what he needs. If he is presented that one first, he will be a happy caller. Is this possible? Can the IVR identify number and link to database to decide on a set of menus to present the caller based on history and transactions? It should not be difficult if you have the right IVR solution provider.

6. Be ready to modify and refine

Do not be complacent that once an IVR system is in place there is nothing more to do. In fact, it is a starting point. The IVR should have some sort of data collection and analytics features so that user behavior can be monitored and taken as inputs to tailor the solution to fit caller expectations.

Source: https://ivrsystemdesign.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/6-tips-for-creating-a-user-friendly-ivr-system/

IVR Development for Businesses –Avoiding the Pitfalls

IVR arrived on the scene. Businesses adopted it in droves. IVR does help businesses save on manpower costs and provide a measure of self service. No less important is that the system can gather data and also fetch data from a backend CRM. However,  interactive voice response systems delivered on some promises but became the cause of customer churn in some cases. This can happen to your business due to a dumbed down IVR with a rigid set of responses. Callers can become extremely frustrated. They will leave.

IVRs are truly helpful for business

A business can adapt an IVR according to the purpose. IVR systems can provide information to callers. It can also be used for payments and for carrying out surveys as happens in outbound IVRs but the main focus is on inbound IVRs as a versatile business aide. By providing self service companies need not have employees dedicated to the task. They can work on something more productive and business certainly benefits.

IVR has pitfalls too

Since most business owners are not aware of the capabilities of IVR and also its pitfalls, they usually go in for a set of structured responses according to the purpose. As always happens, this type of system developed on the basis of anticipated queries can only give limited satisfaction. Some may make it more complex. This leads to innumerable key presses and wait times. In both cases, the caller becomes frustrated and shifts loyalties elsewhere.  Fault is not in the IVR but the way it is understood and implemented. Should you wish to implement IVR then it is wise to know the advantages and avoid pitfalls of IVR by retaining an expert and experienced company for IVR solution development

Pitfall one

A rigid hierarchy of responses implemented in the IVR means callers can only have limited options. Getting through to a live agent may not even be a feature and this can be quite frustrating. Solution: If you must implement a limited functionality IVR then at least analyze and research call patterns and query patterns so that the IVR answers most queries. Also, let your developer know that he will be required to make changes as you get feedback.

Pitfall two

Too many branches to the tree. Companies think that a portmanteau IVR that covers all possible queries and purposes. This leads to development of a very complex IVR with many branches and innumerable key presses. A caller who is in a hurry not only gets frustrated; he can become furiously enraged that he is getting nowhere. Solution: In this type of scenario a dynamic IVR solution implemented by specialists in IVR development helps you get it right and avoid customer churn.

Pitfall three

Not understanding or accepting that some callers may like to talk with a human agent. The wise thing is to provide this option right at the start of the interaction but then companies may ask, if a human agent is to attend calls what is the point of IVR? Solution: Dynamic IVR with a measure of artificial intelligence is what modern businesses need to make IVR a delightful customer experience. AI in the IVR can sense a caller’s mood and switch him to a live agent! Dynamic IVR can help companies customize the tree to their liking based on customer feedback and delight callers with fast resolution.

There is a lot that can be done with dynamic IVR implementations in business and when you have the right IVR solution Development Company, your business grows, costs reduce and customer base increases.