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“Ugh, I just want to talk to a real person!”
It’s a sentiment that’s been echoed by nearly anybody who has ever been pushed through an automated phone system, with 88% of customers saying they prefer to speak with an actual person instead of navigating a phone menu.
As customers increasingly demand personalized experiences, it’s tempting to think that interactive voice response (IVR) is destined to be a relic of the past.
But here’s the thing: IVR isn’t extinct — it’s just evolving.
Sure, a basic touch-tone menu that forces all of your customers through the same journey won’t cut it anymore. But voice AI in contact centers has already come a long way, with 80% of customer experience leaders believing voice AI is ushering in a new era in modern contact centers.
Put simply, what used to work doesn’t work anymore — and sticking with a legacy IVR system that’s well past its prime will only cause frustration for your customers and your support agents.
That frustration isn’t just theoretical — it’s a real risk to your business. As Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express (and an Assembled customer) puts it:
“At the end of the day, consumers are consumers and they need to be heard. If they feel like they're not heard, they'll find somebody else.”
Need more convincing? Let’s take a closer look at a few of the ways antiquated IVR is holding you back — and how advancements in voice AI are modernizing (rather than eliminating) the role of these automated phone systems.
Here’s why most customers groan when they encounter an automated phone menu: They know it can’t actually help them.
Most customers readily acknowledge that these systems are nothing more than glorified call routers. They’ll press a few buttons, but ultimately, it’s only a bottleneck in their customer journey before they finally land with a real person.
Legacy IVR systems are notorious for poor call containment, with seven out of 10 companies in a McKinsey survey reporting that their containment rate (the percentage of calls that remain within the IVR system) is 30% or less. And, by the time customers do reach an agent, they’re exasperated — and maybe even angry.
That means all your system is doing is kicking the can down the road. And, when Gartner reports that nearly a third of callers will abandon their service journeys if they’re kept waiting too long, it’s a log jam you can’t afford.
“I don't want to keep hiring people. I'd rather the people I do have do more valuable work and solve real problems versus the low-hanging fruit of very general questions.”
— Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express
In the rare cases when an archaic phone system can fully resolve a customer’s inquiry? It’s likely just a basic one that you had a pre-programmed response for. While that does offload a little work off your agent’s plate, it’s not a worthwhile trade-off for the level of customer frustration your agents need to deal with.
Today’s automated phone systems go way beyond routing calls, supplying information, and answering the most basic of queries.
Now, support teams can design multi-step resolutions with things like lookups, actions, and conditional logic. This means these systems can automate even complex resolutions that would’ve previously required human agents.
These systems are capable of delivering dynamic interactions, not just duplicate responses.
You’ve probably been there before: You’re repeatedly yelling, “Support!” into the receiver. But the phone system? It keeps hearing “Report!” and you’re stuck in an endless loop that keeps routing you to the wrong place.
It’s enough to get your blood pressure up. And, unfortunately, it’s an all-too-frequent occurrence with dated systems that rely only on basic speech recognition without any understanding of complex or nuanced language.
You’re left with misrouted calls, inefficient processes, and customers who are at their wits’ end by the time they’re connected with a real person.
Many modern systems don’t just offer natural language processing — they have natural language understanding (NLU).
This is a subset of NLP that focuses on comprehending human language (including the meaning, intent, and context) instead of just processing the words. Customers can speak freely, interrupt the voice AI assistant, and even carry on side conversations — without throwing a wrench in the phone workflows.
The ability to have a far more natural and human-like interaction with an automated phone system leads to a significantly better customer experience, with 65% of customers saying voice AI improves their phone interactions.
You probably implemented an IVR system to help your support agents. In reality, though, it could be doing more harm than good.
When the phone menu routes a customer to a live agent, the agent often has to pick up the interaction with little or no context. Customers are forced to repeat themselves or start over from the beginning.
If agents do have information, it’s overwhelming and too dense for them to sort through quickly. Among companies that don’t use generative AI, 81% of agents said they were overwhelmed by the information available to them during calls.
On top of that, antiquated IVR systems are completely disconnected from relevant tools like CRMs, ecommerce platforms, or even your other support channels. In Deloitte Digital’s 2023 Global Contact Center Survey, only 7% of contact centers said they had ways to seamlessly transition their customers between channels while preserving interaction data and context.
“You can’t just hand it off and the agent picks up the phone and says, ‘Tell me your name.’ That makes people mad.”
— Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express
Today's voice AI platforms can inform your agents without inundating them. When the system hands off an interaction to an agent, it provides a quick summary and relevant handoff data so the agent is in the know without having to wade through irrelevant details.
These systems can also directly connect to your other tools so you can create automated workflows and take actions across all of your different channels
It’s easy for IVR systems to become a “set it and forget it” thing for support teams. You implement the platform and then don’t think about it — until a customer complains or flags an issue with your phone menus.
As McKinsey explains, “Too many companies still treat IVR as an afterthought, relying on outdated technologies and customer journeys that have changed little since the 1990s.”
Further, legacy platforms don’t provide robust enough reporting or analytics for support leaders to understand how the automated phone system is performing against their expectations. That makes it tough to confirm the system is having the desired impact and limits opportunities to make improvements.
Today’s automated phone systems are no longer black boxes. They can provide high-level insights to provide an instant picture of performance.
However, they can also drill down to the nitty-gritty of specific interactions so you can continue to optimize and get the most value out of the system.
Let’s face it — customers have never wanted to be bounced around through clunky phone menus. But that’s become increasingly true as they expect (or even demand) personalized and connected support experiences.
That doesn’t mean you need to eradicate IVR from your contact center — rather, you need to update it.
Yes, legacy IVR systems that force people through inflexible menus and rely on key-press inputs will frustrate your customers and your agents. But those workflows don’t even begin to represent what modern voice AI platforms are capable of.
IVR itself isn’t broken — it’s just that legacy systems are behind the times. When you implement modern technology for automated phone service, you’ll quickly see that this approach can help you accomplish exactly what these systems were intended for: improving your efficiency, effectiveness, and experience.
Of course, not all platforms are created equal. The right partner doesn’t just modernize your tech — they help you operate smarter across the board. That’s what Bobby Thompson, Founder & CEO of Retention Express, found in Assembled:
“Assembled is a dynamic platform. It makes you more efficient, it makes you smarter — and the people really care about your success. You can feel that."
That kind of support makes all the difference when you’re building a better experience for your customers and your agents.
Ready to bring your phone support into the modern era? Get a custom demo of Assist AI Agent for Voice.
