Call centers are the hub of customer service, so they are always looking for ways to improve the service they give to customers. It's a way to not only make customers happier but also keep them coming back.

To accomplish this task, call centers undertake several steps; this includes, providing training to call center agents, analyzing different metrics and implementing changes based on this data. But to find out if these steps are having the effect they're meant to have, it's important to do a survey and ask customers the same thing.

IVR calling system surveys provide one way of getting feedback from the customers. In fact, it's still one of the best ways to find out what customers think. But deciding to use the technology is just the first step in doing it right. IVR surveys need to be made with a few things in mind to make sure that enough information can be gathered from the data.

We wrote down a few tips that will help you make the best IVR survey for your organization so you can make a good survey.

Choose a specific subject

The first step in developing an IVR survey is to come up with clear goals. It could be about how happy customers are with your services or products, or it could be about how well known your brand is. Your goals will help you choose a topic.

You can come up with ideas and choose a topic. Just remember that having a clear, concise goal will help you direct the survey to the right people and give you results that are easy to understand.

Keywords for a Survey

Once you know what you want to get out of your IVR survey, the next step is to decide on the survey keywords. This will help you be sure that you are measuring the right thing. For example, if you want to do a survey on "Customer satisfaction on issue resolution when contacting about a problem with product 'X,'" you would need to define:

Customer: Someone who has bought the "X" product would be a customer.

Issue/Problem – Describe the problem that the customer is having. It could be one problem or a number of problems. Make sure that only major problems are listed.

Satisfaction is what the customer thinks "satisfaction" means.

Resolution – The solution that was offered and implemented.

By clearly defining the survey keywords, you will be able to make a survey question that clearly relates to the chosen topic and improve the quality of the data you collect.

Set up questions that are related to the subject

You've chosen the topic and made sure the keywords are clear. Now you'll want to write questions that are directly about the topic you chose. For example, if the goal of the IVR system survey is to find out how happy customers are with their interactions with an agent, it might not be the best idea to ask how long they had to wait in line. Until and unless you know how the time spent on hold affects the overall level of satisfaction.

Keeping to the chosen topic and making sure the questions are related to it helps improve the quality of the data from the survey.

Ask Important and Clear Questions

Remember, it is vital that each survey question should carry only a single query. For example, "Did the agent know a lot and help you out?" This one question has two parts. It's possible that the agent knew what he was talking about, but he was rude.

This would make it hard for the respondent to answer and could cause the data to be wrong, which would make the whole survey pointless. You can stop this from happening by asking clear and important questions.

Use Easy Words

If survey questions are written with hard-to-understand words, they may not get as many answers because not everyone can understand them. Try not to use words with more than seven letters if you can find and use a simpler word instead.

Don't ask biased questions

Asking your respondents biased questions will make your survey just as unreliable as asking them vague questions. When the answer is suggested in the question, the respondent is more likely to give that answer. You can get more accurate information if you don't ask or use words that are biased.

Ensure Survey Questions have Continuity

When coming up with questions or putting them in an order, make sure they flow together. This will make sure that the question asked and the question that comes after it are related. This will make it easy for the respondents to fill out the IVR survey.

Make questions with limited answers

If you use an IVR survey and ask an open-ended question, you will get a lot of rich qualitative data. But this causes two problems. First, it would make the survey longer, which could cause a lot of people to drop out. The second problem is that the collected data would take time for interpretation. Closed-ended questions are not only short, but they are also easy to answer, and it is easy to figure out what the data means.

Choose the right scale for your questions

When surveys ask for answers on a scale, most people try to avoid giving answers at either end. So, if you have a five-point scale, most of your customers will pick answers that aren't at either end. Also, if the list of possible answers to the question is too long, people may get impatient or forget about the choices and pick answers at random.

For IVR surveys, a nine-point scale works best. This will let you use the one through nine buttons on the phone. This would make sure that customers don't have to enter a double-digit number to answer a question and that they have enough choices to cover their answers.

Give as many choices as you can

Keeping the above points in mind, try to give a wide range of options so that you don't miss out on important information. For example, customers who give the most extreme answer are either the most satisfied or the least satisfied. Giving them a chance to say what they think so you can do what needs to be done.

Make the Survey Short

When you do an IVR survey, you are more likely to have people drop out than when you do a regular survey. So, it is important that the survey be short, so that more people will fill it out. The length of an IVR survey can be anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes. This would give you enough time to get useful information while keeping the respondent's attention.

Wrapping It Up

If you are on the lookout for an IVR service provider, then Office24by7 can be the one for you. Contact us on +91 7097171717.