Genesys (News - Alert) put together a white paper entitled, “The Power of Context and Persistence in Voice Self-Service.” If you’re a contact center manager trying to do more with less, this would be the paper for you.

Phone (News - Alert)-based self-service is simply a no-brainer today. “The formula is tried and true: send more transactions to ultra-low-cost Interactive Voice Response applications, and a portion of the savings can help fund better assisted service,” the paper explains, noting that when the design is clean and the inquiry is simple – account balance, check status, delivery time, etc. – the results are impressive. Costs go down, and satisfaction with the automated transaction is at least neutral, and sometimes even an improvement over assisted service.”

The problem comes when companies get greedy, though. “Against better judgment, the definition of a simple transaction is expanded. Before long, the IVR menu is full of self-service applications that require considerable effort from the customer and increasingly miss the mark.” More and more frustrated customers transfer to live operators and get a negative impression of the company and the sort of service it offers.

In most contact centers, the paper found that “the potential of the traditional approach to IVR is tapped out. Meeting the demands of ‘do more with less’ requires next-generation thinking powered by technology that enables creativity.” The paper discusses latest open systems designed to quickly assimilate information from disparate sources in real time, meaning, the paper concludes, “contact centers can now look beyond just the simplicity of the transaction to identify successful phone-based self-service options.”

Anticipating caller need is the key to it all, the paper finds, and does a good job explaining. “How does a company go about anticipating caller need? The key lies in understanding the context of the call. By searching through the gems hidden among vast stores of data, self-service and routing options can be customized based on the picture these clues generate.”