The company reorganized the way in which client inquiries were fielded and addressed. Part of the reorganization included an IVR to route clients to the appropriate departments. But for all its own technological savvy, Gartner overestimated the possibility of reasonably scripting an IVR to accommodate the calls. In an attempt to cover all the bases, the script became overloaded and confusing, and callers were not getting themselves where they needed to be. The result was frustration and dissatisfaction from a client base accustomed to much more personalized service.
Clients now call specific departments directly from a published list of direct-dial numbers.
There are other drawbacks to automation. At least one company in the TARP survey packed up its IVR because of lost opportunities for cross selling. Advertisements for Digital Equipment Corp. products were generating 3,000 calls a day for additional information. But the script that managed the calls was lengthy and complex, and many callers hung up in response. And despite all the keys punched by those callers that remained on the line, the marketing department still failed to gain a significant profile of who was responding and what ad they were responding to.