Businesses that want to succeed in this fierce competition should turn to Voximplant and integrate Dialogflow into their automated call center software system. Our voice-powered platform makes it possible for companies of different sizes and industries to create engaging conversations with customers, providing them with better service while saving time and money.

Why Customer Experience Technology Matters

Customer experience technology, especially IVR technology, can help you create a more positive customer experience. It can increase your chances of gaining new customers and converting them into customers.

Self-Service Matters

The new era of customer service is self-service, and customers are already embracing it. Approximately 67% of customers take advantage of self-service over speaking with a company representative. If people have the option to source for what they want on their own, then that's where you'll find them in droves, particularly millennials with an affinity towards using self-service portals and voicebots. You only need to provide them with the information they need to navigate through your website and accomplish their goals.

Quick Resolution to Customer Problems

Most customers will use whatever method is most convenient for them if they know that they will receive a quick response to their questions. Over 80% of American consumers believe that a pleasant customer experience is defined by timeliness, convenience, knowledgeable assistance, and amiable service. Companies are beginning to appreciate the advantages of using IVR technology to address routine concerns such as scheduling interviews or processing customer requests.

IVR systems can also inform customers about updates and real-time notifications. Clients will have peace of mind knowing that their problems are being handled properly. With thousands of calls answered without having to have anyone on the line, companies can be sure that thousands of calls are quickly resolved every day.

Worthy Investment in Customer Service

Businesses that offer a great customer experience have the best chances of succeeding in a competitive market. Experience-driven businesses made 1.4 times more revenue and 1.6 times more customer lifetime value than other companies.

Companies are realizing the value of a positive client experience, leading them to increase their investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and IVR systems, which can help with automating your routine customer service calls. A Forrester Research study found that 62% of companies view automated contact centers as a key differentiator that sets them apart from their competitors.

Your customer's buying experience will be easy and highly engaging if you use a convenient customer service strategy that integrates an IVR system. As a result, you'll have a higher chance of keeping them. You'll need less money to generate new sales as your existing customers are more likely to buy from you again and recommend your services to others.

What is Google Dialogflow

DialogFlow is the natural language understanding engine that helps developers build conversational applications like chatbots and voice agents. With Dialogflow, you can easily integrate AI-based bots into your existing application or website to automate certain tasks with ease. 

Dialogflow ES

ES agent is suitable for short conversations and has been praised for its simplicity. ES is often used with voice apps in which a short utterance matches one intent. For instance, a food delivery voice app where you can say: “I would like to order a pizza”. The voicebot will offer available pizzas, ask for size, quantity and delivery address.

Dialogflow ES interacts with the API in the following steps: 

  • The user communicates through typing or speaking.
  • Dialogflow receives this end-user expression as a detection intent request message.
  • Dialogflow sends a detect intent response message with the matched intent, the action, the parameters, and the response for the intent.
  • As needed, the service executes operations such as database searches or API requests.
  • The end-user receives a visual or audible response.

Dialogflow CX

Dialogflow CX is more advanced engine that is suitable for complex and long conversations over 10 minutes. CX takes customer service one step further with a virtual agent that resembles a live human agent. It can understand human speech and convert it into data for your apps. Multiple conversational turns allow agents to obtain relevant information from the user on more complex topics. This is the following steps for when you use Dialogflow CX as part of the integration:

Users can type or say things. Your user interface (or integration system) receives the input and sends it to the Dialogflow API for a detect intent request. 
The Dialogflow API matches the intent to the request. It sets the parameters for you. If it needs to call a webhook, it will send a request to your service. 
When you get a request, your service can take any actions, like calling other websites or databases.
Dialogflow receives a webhook response from your webhook service.

Dialogflow can answer a question with a detect intent answer.

If a webhook is called, it will use the response from the webhook. If no webhook is called, it will use a static response defined in the agent. Dialogflow sends a detect intent response to your user interface or integration system.
The end-user hears receives the detect intent response from the user interface or integration system.

Biggest difference between CX and ES is the fact that CX is part of a bigger CCAI (Contact Center AI) by Google. Voximplant supports the entire range of CCAI capabilities allowing to build extremely sophisticated and efficient solutions like for instance Agent assistant: DF CX bot will be listening to conversation between agent and client in real time and suggesting hints to the agent based on understood speech.

How to Integrate Dialogflow with Voximplant

Using the Voximplant API and Dialogflow, you can make outbound phone calls as well as answer your calls to your call center in just a few minutes. Take these steps to integrate Dialogflow with Voximplant. 

In order for this to work, your Dialogflow bot must already be working. Go to Settings, and then you go to Google Projects. You will then be able to create a key. It will come out as a JSON file that you download to your computer. 

You can connect with Voximplant now. Now that you have this file, you can drop it in Voximplant and click on install. It will then show a sandbox phone number.
You can now dial the phone number and code so you can access the voice bot that you just created. Go to the Voximplant’s Applications tab to find the voice bot with a phone number and code. You can give your new voicebot a call to test it out.

You can also check this two-minute video tutorial.

Best Practices for Using an IVR Setup

Following these simple IVR best practices will help you ensure your call center's success and ensure you satisfy your customers’ expectations.

Never Underestimate Human Patience

There is a tendency among businesses to present too many IVR menu choices simultaneously in an attempt to cover as much ground as possible. Not everyone is going to be patient enough to listen through all 10 options on the IVR menu. Ensure your IVR menus are as short as possible.

Customer personas and customer journey maps can be helpful in mapping out customer needs, concerns, and objections when they need to buy your product or ask about your service. By using these tools, you can get a better idea of who your customers are and prepare your IVR menu accordingly.

Make Calling Easy for Customers

The IVR menus that rely on key presses contain many pre-recorded messages. Therefore, it is crucial that they do not mislead the caller. When directing a caller, it's normally best to state the goal before informing which key to hit. You can set up your pre-recorded message such as: "If you wish to speak directly with a customer support agent, press 4". This way, callers may decide first and then take action, reducing the chances of them misdialing the wrong phone number. 

Keep Your Messaging Short

A long introductory message and ambiguous menu option recordings frequently lead to customers leaving customer service calls. Companies tend to make their opening messages promotional. In order to keep callers engaged, they must keep introduction messages and menu options to a few seconds. 

Keep sentences concise and consistent, and remove unnecessary words from the menu descriptions. Use everyday language for introductory messages and menu descriptions. You will be able to help people resolve their issue and reach an agent as soon as possible as well as reduce errors.

Allow Room for Customer Mistakes

Mistakes are a natural part of life. Even competent IVR systems can make mistakes now and then, but this doesn't mean you should hang up on your customers. Allow customers the opportunity to provide invalid input before doing so. It is always possible to fix errors while testing and optimizing your IVR system if they occur as your customers dial into your contact center. 

Match With Your Brand’s Tone and Voice

When designing an IVR script for your voicebot, it's important to make sure that the voice tone and messaging match your brand. The IVR system will require consultation with marketing or branding departments to ensure consistency. The IVR system should speak in a voice that matches your brand's values to help customers reach an agent as quickly as possible while also reducing errors. Customers will remember you for a long time if it speaks in a consistent tone.

Always Have Live Representatives

Your IVR menu should include an option to contact a customer service representative. Provide a way for callers who are in need of a live person to speak with one. If a user wants to interact with a live agent, they should be able to hit 0 instead of using self-service options. Zero-outs increase customer satisfaction and prevent IVR abandonment.

Occasionally, your lines may be busy, increasing response times. If this is the case, it may be preferable to ask the customer to enter their phone number so that agents can call them back when available.

Analyze Your IVR System Consistently

Before you even begin putting together the customer flows, prepare yourself for making changes to them. Having regular access to IVR data can help businesses discover which situations contribute to break points and then identify their root causes. Analyze any consumer feedback after each call to gauge overall satisfaction. Keep track of first call resolution statistics to make sure people got the correct person on their first attempt. Dialogflow can also automatically expand phrase matching for intents and keep track of missed intents so the future experience improves. 

Additionally, you can analyze customer demographics and interaction histories to gain a deeper understanding of consumer preferences and behaviors. You can then use this information to create strategies and better customer flows to improve the IVR experience, increasing customer satisfaction. 

Test Your System

In order to provide the best customer support, clients are looking for IVR solutions that are tailored to their specific needs. They want to use the IVR system swiftly and easily. Before deploying an IVR solution, it is critical that you thoroughly test it first.

Putting the solution to the test in real-world scenarios is the best way to assess its IVR experience. IVR test results may also be more credible when real users are incorporated into the process. The results will enable developers to detect and eliminate errors that affect the IVR experience.

Using Google DialogFlow with Voximplant for the Best Customer Experience

Many customer-service interactions will continue to be handled by automated call-handling systems. The IVR industry continues to evolve with voicebots that are capable of resolving complex customer inquiries thanks to emerging technologies such as AI-powered natural language processing systems like Google Dialogflow and predictive analytics. Businesses can use IVR technology to delight customers by taking advantage of these new opportunities.