Member Article

Engage Hub launches AI-powered Next-Gen IVR

Engage Hub today announced the latest release of its Next-Gen Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution. The new features of the AI-driven technology enable a fully-personalised experience for customers and full cross-channel integration.

The solution, part of the Engage Hub platform, gives IT and contact centre managers the ability to add voice to their systems and provide automation while still offering the best customer experience. It also integrates ewith all other customer channels, simplifying what for many customer-facing businesses is a daunting problem.

The solution has also been rolled out across 600 Sainsbury’s superstores across the country.

“Having an IVR solution fully integrated into our in-house systems means that more and more calls are being dealt with away from our superstores, enabling workers to focus on delivering great instore customer service,” said Paul White, Head of Partner Performance, Customer Management Centres Sainsbury’s. “Engage Hub has helped us drive a significant and immediate reduction in the number of lost calls and our customers are able to get the answer they need in the timescales they expect.”

IVR is often a complex problem due to legacy technology that prevents businesses taking advantage of the latest advances in voice recognition and natural language processing. Next-Gen IVR aims to tackle this issue by integrating with other CX systems to create a unified experience. CRM data is updated so that customer data is the same no matter the channel used, and the natural language processing is used for both online chatbots and IVR—meaning conversations can play out in the same way on both channels.

“With conversational IVR, customers can use their voice to quickly get the answers they need,” said Chris Crombie, Senior Product Owner, Engage Hub. “But it’s the integration with other channels that really makes the difference—this isn’t a simple add-on, but instead offers unified customer service. A customer calling at peak time can, for example, get answers to their simple questions quickly, and then request an SMS to join a web chat with a customer service representative when they are free. “One of our clients, a major UK health and beauty retailer, has seen two-thirds of common queries dealt with by conversational IVR. This means agents are now free from mundane tasks so they can focus on more complex customer care cases. After digitising its offering and using our Next-Gen IVR, another client, a large tier one bank, also saw a 13% increase in customers self-serving.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Engage Hub .