Can Visual IVRs Shift Popular Opinion in Speech Tech’s Favor?

Jacada

Another visual IVR vendor worth consideration is Jacada, which emphasizes its omnichannel approach to customer engagement when blending digital and voice experience. The company, formerly known as Client/Server Technology, was founded in 1990 and later changed its name to Jacada in 1999.

Of particular note is Jacada’s quick implementation—the company says that because its solution coordinates with the original IVR script already in place, enterprises that choose it can have a visual IVR up and running in a matter of days. Another major selling point is that Jacada can offer the visual IVR in multiple ways, in both mobile and non-mobile environments.

Chris du Toit, chief marketing officer for Jacada, reiterates the importance of keeping both the audio and visual channels open: “End users of Jacada solutions can keep the voice channel open during the visual session, [giving them] that level of comfort that they haven’t been abandoned. That’s very important.”

Du Toit notes that, on average, Jacada’s visual IVR solution cuts customer wait time by 62 percent, and agent handle time by 72 percent.

In terms of return on investment, du Toit cites several success stories. “One of our clients, an international financial institution, has about 2.5 million cardholders. But despite a mobile app, they were still getting 500,000 a month into the contact centers, so the mobile app really wasn’t doing anything for call deflection. What they wanted to do was improve mobile engagement. So the way they’ve implemented Jacada is make a way for their end users to phone in through the voice channel. The IVR greets the end user and says, ‘We’ve got a much better visual-digital experience that you can access by pressing 1.’ Then you get sent a text message with a link to a visual or digital session. So basically, Jacada pivoted the end user from that expensive voice channel into a visual channel.”

Du Toit points out that Jacada is particularly useful in this application because its solutions employ pure HTML, which eliminates needing to have anything installed on the end user’s phone.

“That’s the barrier to adoption,” du Toit says. “The client already had a mobile app, and people were just not using it”—which is a decided high note for those who worry that the rise of the mobile app culture marks a decline for the speech technology of traditional IVRs.

Du Toit notes that Jacada clients enjoy an average of 11 percent call deflection and a 40 percent call reduction, along with happy reports of 98 percent customer satisfaction rates.

But the key to satisfying customers with a successful visual IVR implementation, du Toit says, is getting them to commit to it. “How are you going to get your customers to adopt?”