As customer service continues to overtake price and product as a brand’s key differentiator, businesses are increasingly seeking out ways to help streamline and optimize every aspect of the customer experience, from queue management and hold times, to interactions and follow-ups. But for many of today’s leading contact centers, there is very little control over when a call is answered and by whom, and often no efficient or effective means of identifying callers prior to speaking with them. Consider this—while 59% of calls require identity verification, only 3% are handled entirely through automated processes (ContactBabel). For most, basic and static IVR menus(i.e. “press 1 for sales, press 2 for support”) are the primary means of differentiating callers and attempting to route them to the appropriate department, with little to no account for preexisting customer data or prior interactions.
