Nuance Business Consulting Services

Business rule transfers; you know what they are. You have a caller coming into the IVR, making a good faith attempt to self serve, then Wham... they get told "please hold while I forward your call to ..."

People building speech-enabled applications hate when that happens.  Well, let me re-word that. The speech team may not hate business rule transfers, but we often see them as significant lost opportunities.

It's clear that there are multiple objectives and drivers in deploying a speech IVR. You can realize agent time savings, improve customer satisfaction, reduce misdirects, increase self-service and revenue, etc. for your company. In many cases, these objectives are prioritized differently for different companies.  And, it's clear that at some points in the business cycle that a company wants to push calls to a sales rep to raise revenue or increase market share.

It's all a matter of balance though. You need to balance the need for new sales against your callers' desire to complete a transaction against the potential savings in agent costs. And as long as you have good data to support the decision, you'll probably be okay.  But we frequently see companies making these transfers without adequate information to support that decision.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when making that decision (we're basically talking about transfers to upsell/cross sell here, not transfers for other reasons like authentication, unable to identify caller, behind in payments, special handling required, etc.):

• What is the success rate for calls that transfer out re: new sales or revenue? 
  If you have low success rates, you may not have a good match behind customer interest and product/service. You are probably aggravating the caller, wasting agent time and not getting much in return. You might be better off putting a teaser in the application to better gauge customer interest while letting them self-serve.
  
• What are the loaded costs for agent transactions vs. self-serve?
  Look at the numbers. How much do you save by allowing a caller to self-serve versus how much you might gain in new revenues?
  
• What is the impact on caller satisfaction and retention?
  You need to honestly evaluate how well your transfer reason maps to caller needs. If you are getting a high hit rate, you are probably offering callers something they want or can be persuaded they want. If not, your callers are probably not pleased that they've been prevented from completing a transaction to hear a pitch for something they have no interest in. Don't be confused by high hit rate if the caller the calls back to cancel what you sold them; they may have agreed initially just to get off the phone.

So, in many cases business rule transfers have their place in a call center environment. If you are giving the caller a service that they find valuable, AND you quickly and seamlessly complete the transaction they were initially attempting (this means not asking them for information they've already entered - CTI can help here), then these transfers can be a win-win. If not, you'll find you are wasting money and not giving your customers the great treatment they deserve.