How to Customize IVR Call Flow to Maximize Containment

For companies using interactive voice response (IVR) systems, a well-designed call flow is essential to optimizing customer interactions and optimizing self-service capabilities. When strategically designed, IVR call flows allow customers to resolve common issues themselves, ensuring agents can focus on complex or high-priority cases.

Optimizing IVR call flow is an ongoing process as customer needs and company capabilities change. By staying aware of the IVR call flows on your system, you can maximize containment, reduce hold times, and even avoid many reasons for call center burnout.

This guide will cover best practices for designing IVR call flows, common problems, and how to identify problems in an existing system.

IVR Call Flow Basics

IVR is a standard feature for business telephone services And call center software. It provides an easy way to take calls and encourages callers to use self-service options before speaking to an agent or receptionist.

When a customer calls, the automated system immediately greets them with a menu of options. These may include transfer to a specific department or agent, access to recorded information such as a work address, or retrieval of personal account information.

Each menu item corresponds to a number on the caller’s touch-tone keypad. A typical example is “press 0 for operator”. With this method, callers can easily select the most suitable option or category that suits their needs by clicking on the corresponding number.

The custom menu options and automatic checkpoints you create for your IVR system make up an IVR call flow, which is a series of steps that a caller will take from one option to another until they reach their desired destination.

A single call center IVR system may have tens or hundreds of potential call flows. The trick is to make it as easy as possible for the client to complete a specific series of steps. A high-performance IVR call flow should be simple and intuitive, with options that precisely match customer needs without unnecessary steps.

When illustrated, an IVR call flow diagram would resemble a telephone tree that branches at each decision point, displaying a customer’s options throughout their caller journey.

WATCH: Discover latest IVR updates and the catch eight free phone tree templates to start off on the right foot.

How IVR call flow affects containment

The containment level is key indicator in call centers which compares the percentage of calls resolved by the IVR to the total number of calls routed through the IVR. A 50% containment rate means that half of all calls are handled successfully by the IVR, while the other half require a live agent.

A high containment rate indicates that IVR call flow is optimized: callers find what they need through the IVR system rather than talking to an agent.

If you notice a decrease in containment levels, there is likely something wrong with one or more IVR call flows.

There is currently no industry standard for the level of containment that all call centers strive to meet. Customer call patterns vary too much from location to location. You’ll have to look at past data and set your own baseline.

To calculate your localization rate, divide the number of calls resolved solely through IVR technology by the total number of incoming calls. Both of these data points should be easy to find on the analytics dashboard of any modern call center software.

Customers often report an improvement in overall call quality when they have the ability to find answers without the help of an agent. In many cases, they can resolve the issue faster this way and prefer this to being stuck in an endless line at a call center.

WATCH: Find out the most common ones Reasons for long waits in line.

Likewise, agents tend to feel happier and perform more efficiently when the level of inhibition is high. This means they spend less time on easy-to-solve problems and spend more time solving difficult problems. As containment levels increase, agents face lower call volumes, which means less stress and fewer customers frustrated by being on hold.

IVR Call Flow Tips for Increased Containment

Here are a few ways to make sure you’re setting up IVR call flows to maximize containment:

• Simplify your menu options: Make your IVR menu concise and intuitive. Too many options or complex menus can confuse callers and cause them to choose to use an agent. Direct and clear flow encourages self-care and enhances inhibition.
• Expanding self-service capabilities: Focus on common customer requests and tasks that can be completed without an agent, such as checking account balances, making paymentsor resetting passwords. Providing helpful self-service capabilities will increase the likelihood that customers will resolve their issues in the IVR.
• Include clear confirmation prompts: Use confirmation prompts to ensure clients are on the right track before proceeding. For example, asking, “Is this the information you are looking for?” can reduce confusion and help guide the customer through IVR without the need for an agent.
• Optimize call flow based on data: Regularly review metrics such as bounce rate and task completion rate to identify and correct areas where customers are leaving. If some steps are often skipped, consider simplifying them or providing clearer options.
• Provide clear exit routes for escalation: While the goal is deterrence, it is important to provide a clear path to agents’ assistance when needed. Don’t frustrate customers by giving them a clear and easy way to contact an agent if needed, but don’t make it their first choice.
• Update and test your stream regularly: Continuously adapt call flow based on emerging customer needs or feedback. Testing new scenarios and features ensures that your IVR remains effective and continues to meet user expectations, helping to maintain or improve containment.
• Use conversational IVR: Implement IVR systems that use natural language processing and speech recognition to allow callers to interact more naturally. Conversational IVR helps customers feel more engaged, reduces frustration, and increases the likelihood of issues being resolved without involving agents. Find out more about Benefits of conversational IVR.

Most of these methods require nothing more than a little analysis on your part. And the payback can be quite dramatic. A single confusing menu can lead to many other problems.

How to detect problems with IVR call flow

There are several metrics that show you where problems may arise in your call flow. Monitoring these indicators helps identify specific bottlenecks that lead to inefficiencies:

• Containment level: Measures the percentage of calls resolved by the IVR without agent involvement. A decrease in this indicator indicates that IVR cannot effectively meet the needs of callers, which leads to an increase in the number of calls to agents.
• Call refusal rate: Tracks how often callers hang up before the IVR process completes. A sudden increase in abandonment rates suggests that call flow may be disappointing or may not provide the expected self-service capabilities.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Collecting feedback through post-call surveys shows how satisfied customers are with the IVR. Low CSAT scores often indicate problems in the IVR process that need to be addressed.
• Average Handling Time (AHT): Measures the average time spent on calls, including those transferred to agents. A high AHT may indicate inefficiencies in the IVR flow, such as redundant steps or unclear routing.

Beyond these basic metrics, there are several other metrics that can indicate problems with IVR call flow. For example, an increased failure rate of first call resolution (FCR) may indicate that the IVR is not effectively guiding callers to the right solutions. A high transfer rate may indicate calls are not being routed correctly, while agents that are too busy may indicate overload caused by ineffective IVR.

Identifying these problems and solving them will help you improve call flows and prevent many subsequent problems such as customer dissatisfaction and long call queues.

How to create an IVR call flow from scratch

A good rule of thumb is to start with a main menu of three to five broad categories that best summarize what the caller might need. You can find this information by viewing call data for the most common reasons why customers contact you. These may include keywords and phrases such as “website help,” “bill questions,” and “updating account information.”

From here, each selection should lead to a submenu of more specialized options designed to solve the caller’s problem. These options may include automated recording of useful information for example, business addresses and opening hours. Keep in mind that modern integrations and AI features can also automate the sharing of caller information, such as bill totals and account balances.

Before going into details, remember to keep the menu simple and concise. Otherwise, confused customers may become disconnected from your call flow and ask an agent for help or abandon the call altogether. Of course, there may be times when you decide to connect callers to an agent, but you don’t want that to happen too early because it defeats the purpose of having self-service capabilities if no one is using them.

Nevertheless, call center best practices should include the ability to “dial 0” at any time so that the caller can immediately queue up and speak to a human agent. In many cases, simply providing this option results in better call quality, even if callers don’t use it.

Likewise, another good practice is to offer a call back rather than making the caller wait until the next agent becomes available. This approach gives customers more freedom and also prevents average processing times from being too long.