It's about time companies started getting serious about fixing their automated call-in support systems. Many phone menus seem designed to send callers running in circles, perhaps in hopes they'll hang up without so much as leaving a voicemail -- the so-called "voicemail hell." Customers have taken matters into their own hands, turning to sites like GetHuman to figure out shortcuts through call center menus. Fittingly, a company named Angel.com has new products that could let businesses deliver the shortcuts themselves.
This morning, Angel.com announced that the company has beefed up its cloud-based interactive voice response system with business intelligence tools from Angel's parent company, MicroStrategy, a huge BI software firm founded in 1989 and headquartered in McLean, Virginia. MicroStrategy went public in 1998, and spun off Angel.com in 1999.
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is the technology companies use to build phone systems that handle customers' calls much more cheaply than human operators. Like most information technology, it has moved over the years from standalone hardware, to custom-built rack-mounted servers, and now to online cloud systems that could be anything, anywhere.
In short, MicroStrategy's BI tools will let Angel.com customers analyze their IVR systems and optimize them on-the-fly to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs. By routing callers to solutions rather than dead ends, it could reduce their urges to fling their cellphones into the nearest wall. It's also an example of cloud technology letting two companies hook up their products to wring new benefits.
Angel.com President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Rennyson explained the company's new tools in a phone interview. The MicroStrategy tools, dubbed Caller First in Angel's system, brings several BI tools to bear on phone menus. Colorful, customizable dashboards track hang-ups, visits, time spent on a page, and other indicators of trouble spots.
The system measures and tracks how many callers hung up, how many punched 0 for an operator, and how many completed a call session without trouble indicators. IVR administrators can view the paths callers take through the system to identify entry and exit points, which areas are hit most frequently, and which cause people to hang up. Because the reports are integrated with the call system, Rennyson said, it's possible to configure a phone menu, push it live to customers, get feedback on what works and what doesn't, and make improvements the same day.
Admins can listen to recorded calls, too. "It's amazing to listen to those calls, to hear what people are saying," Rennyson said. "You get to hear the problems they're having."