Genesys IVR Personalization (CE09) for PureConnect

This topic is part of the manual PureConnect Use Cases for version Current of Genesys Use Cases.

Increase self-service by personalizing your IVR

What's the challenge?

When your customers call in to service themselves, they want to get off the phone as soon as possible. Giving customers options that confuse more than help slows the process, causes frustration and leads to more agent interactions.

What's the solution?

Deliver a great experience and increase self service adoption by helping customers navigate the IVR quickly. Genesys IVR Personalization tailors messages, menus and treatments based on who the customer is and why they are calling, also taking capacity into account.

Other offerings:

Use Case Overview

Story and Business Context

IVRs have historically been designed to maximize the containment of callers to reduce staffing costs associated with increased call volume, often without a careful assessment of customer experience. This has led to deep and complex IVR menu trees that frustrate customers, create an undesirable customer experience, and result in high opt-out rates. IVR personalization addresses the following:

Simplifies the menu structure (both depth and within a single menu)
Presents meaningful options to the caller
Increases containment and use of the IVR through ease of use and relevance of options
Increases customer satisfaction through simpler, more relevant navigation and completion of tasks IVR personalization is proven to increase self-service rates and improve customer experience.

Use Case Benefits*

The following benefits are based on benchmark information captured from Genesys customers and may vary based on industry, lines of business or Genesys product line:

Use Case Benefits	Explanation
Improved Containment Rate	Help customers service themselves quickly and easily so they don’t want to speak to an agent.
Improved Customer Experience	Improve customer experience by reducing IVR handle time, which in turn improves Net Promoter Score (NPS). Increase self-service by presenting customers with proactive messaging based on context
Improved First Contact Resolution	Improve first contact resolution by using dynamic menus to more accurately offer the right self-service or route to the right agent
Reduced Handle Time	The time required to address a customer inquiry or request is optimized.
Reduced Interaction Abandonment	Reduce number of callers abandoning while in queue by enabling easier to use IVR.

^*You can sort all use cases according to their stated benefits here: Sort by benefits

Summary

Customers presented with personalized menus and messages are more likely to self-serve. This functional use case lists several types of personalization as follows:

Proactively play status or balance before presenting any options. For example “Your next order is due to be delivered on Thursday.”
Proactively offer most likely call reason. For example, “Are you calling about the loan application you have in progress?”
Personalize menu options. For example, play a mortgage option in the menu only if they have a mortgage, or present a promotion option only if they are eligible.
Persona-based personalization is the ability to change the wording of input and messages based on language or customer context, such as age.These types of personalization can lead to an increase in self-service rates. They can also improve customer experience by shortening the time spent on the IVR or bypassing self-service based on the context of the customer’s call.The context to drive this personalization can be retrieved from native or from third-party data sources.Personalized IVR can also update customer context so that this information is available across other channels.

Use Case Definition

Business Flow

Business Flow Description

A customer calls a service line of the company and progresses through the routing strategy. The routing strategy is not in scope of this use case.
An IVR application answers the call. The full IVR application is not within the scope of this use case, but the functionality in this use case can be used as a module to enhance the IVR application with personalization options.
If the customer needs to be identified and authenticated (verified), the ID&V interaction uses one or multiple identifiers (such as Customer ID, Account Number, or similar). Customer identification may also be verified by a PIN, if required. This functionality is offered by another use case provided by Genesys, which is leveraged in this scenario, Genesys Customer Authentication (CE07) for PureConnect. The identification and verification functionality itself is not within the scope of this use case.
Using the customer identifier (for example, ANI), Genesys can retrieve customer context information from a third-party system (optional).
The personalized treatment is decided based on submitting context to business rules natively, using third-party systems or using internal data. Personalized treatments include:
- Playing a personalized message to the customer. The caller may hang up at this point if they have all the information they require. For example: The caller is identified to be in a region with a power outage. An announcement can be played to inform the caller of the status.
- Proactively playing status or balance before presenting any options. For example:“Your next order is due to be delivered on Thursday.”
- Proactively offering the most likely call reason. For example: “Are you calling about the loan application you have in progress?”
- Personalizing menu options (dynamic menu). For example: “Only play mortgage option in menu if they have a mortgage or present a promotion option if they are eligible.”
- Sending the customer to:
  - An agent with updated context
  - A self-service application (not in scope)
  - A generic menu if the caller does not fit any of the configured personalization options. In this case, the caller continues to the main menu of the IVR application. Since this use case is about personalization, the development of this main menu is out of scope.

Business and Distribution Logic

Business Logic

This use case is supported by industry templates that contain examples of personalized treatments using built-in variables or external variables. See below for an example list of these variables. Personalized treatments are confirmed during design.

Built-in Variables

Name	Description
Dialed Number	The number the caller dialed.
CLI	Calling Line Identifier - The number the caller is dialing from (also known as Automatic Number Identification - ANI).
Recent Failure Flag	Indicates if a call has failed. When a call fails, for example due to technical error, a flag is set in the database to True or False. This parameter can only use the True or False logic.
Random Percentage	Used for A/B testing. A specified percentage of calls can be randomly selected to be sent down a new leg of the call flow. The results of this testing can be monitored using the reporting.
Last Result	The outcome of the last call flow block. For example, for a menu this would be the menu choice, or for a self-service task it could indicate if it was completed successfully. This value is set by the speech application.
Number of Calls Today	The number of times the customer has called into this call flow today.
Number of Calls in Last Week	The number of times the customer has called into this call flow in the last week.
Number of Calls in Last 2 Weeks	The number of times the customer has called into this call flow in the lasttwo weeks.
Number of Calls in Last 4 Weeks	The number of times the customer has called into this call flow in the lastfour weeks.
Date	A specified date.
Time	A specified time of day.
Date and Time	A specified date and time of that particular day.
Current Day of the Week	This parameter allows you to select a day of the week. Further logic is required.
Opening Hours Rule	This parameter allows you to select whether an opening hours rule is currently open or closed. No further logic is required.
Variable	Variables can be populated with context from within the same dialog or by integrating with other Genesys or third-party systems.

External Variables

In addition to the built in variables described above, additional customer variables can be used in the rules. These can be:

Retrieved from a third-party system via a web service.
Set by the IVR application that leverages this use case. This can be based on caller input, for example.

Business Rules

Business rules are applied to the variables to see how they compare to the configured value. The outcome of the business rule determines which personalized treatment applies. Business rules consist of logical comparisons of one variable with predefined values. Examples include:

Variable customer segment is equal to VIP
Current Date is equal to 24.12.2020
Number of calls in the last week is greater than 3
Multiple logical conditions can be combined within one business rule so that the treatment is applied only if all conditions are met. There is also the option to apply the treatment if any of the conditions are met. Examples for business rules:
- If Customer Segment = VIP and Number of Calls Today > 1, then route directly to VIP agent
- If Customer Segment = Platinum or Customer Segment = Gold, then play preferred customer announcement

The list below defines the possible options for comparison:

Name	Description
Equal to	Compare variable with a value to see if they are equal.
Not equal to	Compare variable with a value to see if they are not equal.
Containing	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable contains the value.
Not containing	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable doesn't contain the value.
Matching pattern	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable matches the pattern in the variable.
Not matching pattern	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable does not match the pattern in the variable.
Starting with	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable starts with the value.
Not starting with	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable doesn't start with the value.
Ending with	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable ends with the value.
Not ending with	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable ends with the value.
In list (comma separated)	Compare variable with a comma separated list to see if the variable is one of the values in the list.
Not in list (comma separated)	Compare variable with a comma separated list to see if the variable isn't one of the values in the list.
Between	Compare variable with two values to see if the variable is between those two values.
Not between	Compare variable with two values to see if the variable is between those two values.
Greater than	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable is greater than the value.
Greater than or equal to	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable is greater than or equal to the value.
Less than	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable is less than the value.
Less than or equal to	Compare variable with a value to see if the variable is less than or equal to the value.
Blank	Check to see if variable is blank.
Not blank	Check to see if variable is not blank.

Multiple Rules

Multiple rules can be added to the business logic for personalized routing so that many different personalized treatments can be handled within the same call flow.

Distribution Logic

N/A

User Interface & Reporting 

Agent UI

N/A

Reporting

Real-time Reporting

Supervisors have the ability to view interactions in the IVR and see which stage the call is in.

Historical Reporting

The Genesys solution provides reports to determine:

Whether customers were presented with contextual options.
Whether dynamic menus were presented and if so, whether customers select a self-service option or are transferred to an agent (deflection rates).
How long customers spent in the IVR.

Customer-facing Considerations

Interdependencies

All required, alternate, and optional use cases are listed here, as well as any exceptions.

All of the following required:

At least one of the following required:

Optional

Exceptions

Inbound

Genesys Personalized Routing (CE02)

None

Self-Service and Automation

Genesys Customer Authentication (CE07)