The green trend is growing as more people recycle, whether it’s plastics, paper or scrap metal. But, in technology, we still tend to say: Let’s trash it and move on. This old “rip and replace” approach is expensive and a serious waste of resources, especially with IVRs. You’re sitting on a wealth of information about your customers that you can use to build voicebots — and reap the rewards of the technology. While getting started with voicebots requires investments in time, training and intent recognition, customers who use existing IVR data already have the price of entry.

Why Conversational IVR and Voicebots Matter

As customer expectations for a more personalized and conversational interactions grow, they have less patience for the limited options of traditional IVRs. This technology can’t offer a personalized experience. They simply weren’t designed for it.

Personalization is the key to exceptional customer experience. To offer this in a meaningful way, you need to know who’s calling and why.

Voicebots improve upon traditional IVRs in many ways, yet they both use the same sources of customer data. You already know where your customers come from and where they frequently browse, as well as their intents. All of this data is gold that voicebots leverage to understand content and the context of spoken requests.

Understanding What Customers Want

With voicebots, you have real conversations with customers versus offering just a menu or the ability to press numbers on a phone. These utterances, the way people speak, occurs freely. That’s why it’s crucial to identify and understand the right things in each conversation — and the “why” behind them.

Keep in mind that the purpose of an IVR isn’t to help customers find a local restaurant, get the weather or play a game, for example. People use IVRs because they want to connect with you. IVRs are the doorway to your business.

This is where many businesses go astray with voicebots. With so much focus on the conversation, they forget that IVRs are just a better way to get people where they need to go. And, by using existing data from your IVR, you already know where they want to go.

But managing and organizing data will vary depending on whether a customer sends a text message, asks Alexa a question on a device or calls in on a phone. These are different use cases with specific functional and technical requirements. When you’re building voicebots, build them right — or you could end up with a traditional IVR that’s even less effective than before.

Getting It Right With Voicebots

Voicebots are the front door to a more conversational IVR. Incorporating more channels will change how your systems look. Think about how customers will interact with your new interface, how functions will be adapted from traditional IVRs and how an advanced dialog engine supports this new form of engagement.

Genesys has long been the leader in voice — and does it better than anyone else. We understand the nuances of voice and voicebots, and how to seamlessly transition those conversations to agents — with context. Based on our experience, analyzing your customer data will not only streamline your transition to voicebots, it’ll also improve your existing IVR.

Get Started — Build Your Bot Today

Voicebots aren’t an end result. They’re another piece of technology to improve what you were trying to do with your traditional IVR – only faster and more efficiently. Take advantage of your existing IVR gold and get going on your next steps.

Genesys onsite workshops give you a great opportunity to build an effective bot in just an hour. You provide your IVR reports and, together, we’ll decide which task makes sense to automate first. Because we use your actionable customer data, you can showcase your voicebot immediately to internal stakeholders — and continue exploring ways to enhance it. Register today for a Build a Bot workshop.