An Outbound IVR (Interactive Voice Response) lets businesses reach out, inform, and engage customers using prerecorded voice messages. It is an automated, yet interactive, system that allows customers to be guided through a menu, check relevant information, and navigate various options. Dialing through the contacts of a database, it can perform predefined tasks as soon as a call goes live. 

An Outbound IVR helps build customer engagement by distributing personalized notifications through not only voice but also digital channels, such as automated voice messages, SMS, or emails. It leverages automation, empowering businesses to connect with customers to increase brand loyalty and grow their market share at scale and in a cost-effective way. 

Since Outbound IVR systems do not require human resources, they can make large numbers of outbound calls simultaneously. In addition, they can deliver urgent messages or reminders and drive better campaigns. Their self-service capabilities provide convenience and speed to customers. 

Benefits of Outbound IVR 

Reduce contact center costs: Outbound IVR interactions benefit from being automated, typically costing 10 cents compared to $8 for live interactions, according to Gartner. They eliminate the need for incremental agents and reduces the workload of existing agents. 

Boost overall agent efficiency: An Outbound IVR brings down the need for agents to make tedious or tiresome calls. It frees them up to deliver more strategic value to customers instead of having to communicate basic or repetitive information. 

Do more with data: An Outbound IVR optimizes channel usage. It lets you contact the right person at the right time through the channel in which they are most likely to respond. 

Personalize interactions: An effective Outbound IVR system gives businesses the ability to personalize communications. As a result, it contributes to building stronger customer relationships. 

Drive more revenue: Outbound IVR systems can quickly deliver predefined messages about sales promotions or new product launches to large groups of customers. 

Deliver smooth customer journeys: With an Outbound IVR system, businesses can better understand the sentiment of customers by collecting feedback on their product or service experiences. It enables them to offer proactive support and create smoother customer journeys. 

Elevate brand awareness: An Outbound IVR system goes a long way towards increasing the performance and reach of marketing campaigns, bringing customers closer to the brand. Since it can send automated texts with meaningful updates, customers and prospects are more likely to pay attention to promotions and new offers. 

How to use Outbound IVR? 

Modern Outbound IVRs are cloud-based systems able to make thousands of outbound calls within a short period of time. They can: 

  • Deliver messages to large sets of customers 
  • Integrate with CRM to increase the level of personalization of every outbound interaction 
  • Engage with customers through interactive menus 
  • Automate the conversion of leads by pre-qualifying the interest shown by customers 
  • Remind customers of upcoming payments and share information about payment options -without involving any agents 
  • Alert customers of various situations, such a possible fraud or an outage 
  • Provide agentless sales and marketing promotions with SMS campaigns and voice message follow-ups 
  • Verify the identity of customers with an interactive outbound call to prevent account takeovers or data security breaches 
  • Follow up with customers based on prior interactions with the business on other channels 
  • Gather valuable insights through customer satisfaction surveys in a non-intrusive manner by placing the call at their convenience 
  • Conduct market research to better understand purchasing preferences 
  • Selectively pause, reactivate, or shut down campaigns based on performance or time-based criterion 

How does Acqueon’s Outbound IVR system work? 

Acqueon provides agentless dialing that leverages an Outbound IVR to engage customers. Using Call Progress Detection (CPD) and Answering Machine Detection (AMD), it can take the right action after identifying whether the call is connected to a live person, fax, or answering machine. This is crucial since many regulations require the recipient to be able to connect to a live agent. Using Acqueon’s Outbound IVR, you can ensure that all the calls made will comply with applicable telemarketing and privacy regulations. 

Acqueon’s outbound IVR is easy to set up and integrate with your CRM. You can quickly start reaching out to new and prospective customers through contextual outbound campaigns that help customers take control of their experiences–as you focus on growing the business. As for any automated solution, outbound IVRs must be considered while maintaining options to access associates and more broadly as part of a menu of dialing options. 

Acqueon built-in Customer Data Platform (CDP) lets you make the most of your dataset, including prior interaction history and customer segmentation attributes like demographics, time zones, etc. It gets you to the ultimate level of personalization and relevance for your automated outreach.