Conversational AI Voicebots vs. IVRs: Which is Better for Contact Center Automation?

When it comes to reaching out for customer service, phone/calling has always been the customer's preferred option. However, the ratio of customers choosing live chat has increased over time, especially thanks to millennials, who prefer texting. Still, calling remains the no.1 choice across generations and countries. 

76% of customers prefer calling when it comes to reaching customer support, says CFI Group 

But the major downside of providing customer support over the phone is that it is expensive - recruiting, training, and deploying support teams. This cost limits the number of customers your support team can attend to at once, which leads to customers waiting in queues, unhappy customers, and lower CSAT scores.  

Why Do Customers Hate traditional IVRs?

Mainly, customers hate traditional IVRs for a simple reason - the IVRs are not intelligent. Customers expect businesses to respond quickly. They don't like going through a tedious phone tree (menu) and pressing corresponding relevant keys to resolve their issues - not to mention the frustrating repetition of processes on pressing a wrong key. 

Customers are 2.4 times more likely to stick with a brand if their issues are quickly resolved, says Forrester

Also, customers hate waiting in the queue before talking to a customer service agent. Although businesses try to minimize the hold/wait time as much as possible, it depends upon the availability of agents. It is frustrating for customers to wait when there is already an issue. 

What is a Voicebot?

Voicebots also referred to as conversational IVR, are voice interfaces that enable computers to have conversations with humans in natural, human language.  

If you have a Voicebot at your contact center instead of a traditional IVR, your customer can have a conversation with the bot in natural language instead of pressing corresponding keys. Basically, a Voicebot is an attempt to replicate human agents. 

Here is an example of a customer talking to a Voicebot

How Voicebots are Reviving Contact Centers

Voicebots (conversational IVRs) are a win-win for businesses as well as customers. It reduces support and telemarketing costs while providing a great customer experience. Having a Voicebot at the contact center is like having an unlimited supply of human agents, ready 24x7 for customers, not just during office hours. It saves you the cost involved in recruiting, training, and managing support and telemarketing teams.  

So, with Voice bots, you can enable self-service and support of most customers' preferred channel, i.e., Voice. 

According to Harvard Business Review, 67% of customers prefer solving problems themselves over talking to a customer service agent.

Conversational AI vs IVRs

Voicebots Can Do Much More than Answering FAQs

Thanks to rapid advancements in deep tech Voice AI, Voicebots have become intelligent. They can understand complex queries and handle sophisticated conversations. Although answering repetitive support queries is the most common use case, they can do advanced tasks like making outbound calls.  

Ontario Green Savings (OGS), a leading utilities company based out of North America, has automated lead generation and qualification through Floatbot's Voicebot. The AI-powered bot makes outbound calls, asks pre-qualification questions to prospects to qualify leads, and books meetings of qualified leads with sales reps.

Summary

Businesses across countries are upgrading their contact centers and moving to Conversational AI Voicebots from traditional IVRs. This new shift is convenient for both businesses and customers.  

It helps businesses reduce support costs, increase high customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and drive business growth.  

For customers, it means 24x7 support no wait/hold time, faster resolution of queries, and self-service. 

If you’re looking for a way to upgrade your IVR system and leverage Voice AI at your contact center, feel free to consult with us at connect@floatbot.ai 

Floatbot is a SaaS-based Conversational AI platform that helps in building Unified Chatbots and Voicebots. Floatbot is a no-code DIY bot builder where both chatbots and Voicebots can be built on the same platform without any coding required. The bot becomes Chatbot in the chat channel and Voicebot on voice channels.