Misnavigation is a hidden cost in nearly every call center

What is misnavigation?

The central function of an IVR system is to connect the caller to the right agent type (e.g. billing vs. sales) or to divert the caller to a self-serve system.  The navigation stage of the call succeeds if the caller connects to the right agent for his issue. It fails if the caller misunderstands the instructions, or loses patience and “zeros out”. This “mis-navigation rate” is a metric closely watched by managers of call centers and can be surprisingly high. Based on conversations with various companies, rates are typically around 30% and can go as high as 50%.

The cost

You can calculate how much misnavigation is adding to the cost of your call center. You need to get: 1) Your mis-navigation rate, 2) Average time it takes for an agent to handle an internal transfer 3) Average cost of agent time. This figure will then help you put it all together: