McKinsey On Automated Calling Technology

McKinsey and Company published a report called “Using IT To Boost Call Center Performance” in the Spring of 2006 which had a few relevant comments for those of you looking at how to leverage automated communications in the healthcare space. Here are the two primary quotes that I took away:

Customers are getting used to automated transactions – in fact, some prefer them. Our research suggests that more than 60 percent of customers favor an automated option for many types of simple interactions (for example, balance inquiries or payments); the rest said they didn’t mind being presented with an automated option as long as they could connect with a live agent if they wanted one.

Investments in new VR (voice recognition) and IVR (interactive voice recognition) technologies can help automate an additional 5 to 30 percent of incoming calls while maintaining or even enhancing customer satisfaction and revenue.

I always love finding those 3^rd party verifications of the value propositions that we see at clients.