In every part of life, there are a lot of myths that go around that many people believe to be true. One example that everyone is probably aware of is that you shouldn’t go swimming less than half an hour after eating. When it comes to the call center industry, there are plenty of myths that have been passed around that have become too ingrained in the culture that most people believe them to be fact. One part of call center technology that is especially notorious for having big myths surrounding it is the IVR. Let’s take a look at a few of these so you can know better moving forward.

1. Adding Language Options Will Scare Callers Away

One thing that everyone knows is that old trope where someone says “why should I need to press 1 for English? We live in America.” This might happen with some people, but most of your callers won’t even notice the language selection option, and the people that need another language will be grateful that the option was there.

2. Setting Up an IVR is Time and Labor Intensive

For some reason, a lot of people believe that setting up an IVR takes a lot of time. In reality, it’s doesn’t take longer than a few days, assuming that your call canter is large. Small and even medium-sized call centers are usually able to get their IVR up and running in just an afternoon.

3. Customers Don’t Like When You Use Your IVR Too Much

Many people that run call centers assume that their callers don’t like hyper-specific menus. The truth is, most callers actually appreciate when they can be completely sure that they’re getting to the right place the first time they call rather than having to get transferred around to get to the correct department.

4. Hold Music Will Make Your Callers Angry

Hold music has been a subject of great debate in the call center community. Do callers like it? Does it make them angry? The answer is actually that most callers prefer having hold music. It lets the caller know that your company is still on the line with something that’s pleasant enough to listen to. Callers are much more likely to get irritated about long waits than hold music.

5. IVRs are incredibly Expensive

A lot of people think that IVRs would be an expensive endeavor, but you can usually find deals that would put the IVR right in your budget. Of course, like with most things, you have a standard package and a deluxe package, but not every call center needs the features in the deluxe packages. What’s even better is that you can write your IVR off as a business expense.

6. Everyone Would Prefer to Talk to a Real Person

Do people like to talk to people on the phone? Yes, and there are definitely some reasons someone would be calling that they would want to talk to a real person. Does everyone feel like they need to talk to a real person every time they call a call center? Absolutely not. Most people prefer just to go through an automated system for simple tasks like paying bills, checking account balances, asking an FAQ, and many other things.

7. Automated Attendants Make Your Callers Uncomfortable

Somewhere down the line, the idea got into the heads of call center managers everywhere that automated attendants would just make callers uncomfortable. Fortunately, this isn’t the case. It may have been more common for this to be a hurdle in this past, but automated attendants have been around long enough that most people are used to them.

8. Automated Attendants Make a Lot of Mistakes

Here’s another instance of a myth that could have been true in the past but it’s not an issue now. Technology has advanced so much that in many cases automated attendants make fewer mistakes on average than human agents.

9. IVRs Make CSRs Lazier

Something that every call center manager is worried about is the work ethic of their call center staff. Some people believe that allowing IVRs to handle simple tasks would make their employees lazier. This simply isn’t the case, and IVRs actually free up more time for your agents to take care of more critical issues that callers are calling in with.

Upgrade Your Call Center

The technology available for call centers today is absolutely unbelievable. If you want to bring your caller center into the modern era, you’ll definitely want to get a good IVR. It can make your whole company run a lot more smoothly, reduce hold time for callers, and sometimes even let your agents be a little more relaxed while they’re going throughout their workdays. Every call center could benefit from integrating this kind of technology.