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10. If you don't need an IVR, don't build one.  

Customers are delighted when a live person picks up on the first ring.

9. Don't play Kenny G.

Customers don't want to listen to elevator music while on hold, they don't even want to be on hold in the first place.  Make the time enjoyable and memorable, play brand messaging, marketing promotions, testimonials, product education, anything but Kenny G.

8. Bring routing into the 21st Century

If you *need* to route to specialized teams, use predictive analytics to anticipate where your customer needs to go

7. Understand the REALITY of the wait

Regularly experience your own IVR to qualitatively measure the waiting experience - Pro Tip: Recently I was subject to a 'Sorry we are still busy, would you like to leave a message' recording every 45 seconds on a 20+ minute queue.  Don't do that, even if you are attempting to deflect contacts.

6. Be Concise - Minimize Queue Trees & Options

The more options and sub trees you have, the higher the probability your customer will misroute themselves.

 5. Be Clear - Queue Options should be Logical

Use the terms your customer uses, not what your company does.

Ex. Cancel v. Terminate or Invoice v. Bill

4. Measure Yourself

The data is there, monitor and evaluate your IVR handle time, abandon rate and routing accuracy.

3. Deflect to Self Service

If your contact type specific AHT is under 2 minutes you don't need a human.  Build Self Service capability across all channels, with logged-in account being the highest priority.

2. Build End-to-End, Multi-Contact Quality Evaluations

It's easy to forget it's not just the agent's live conversation on a single contact that matters, record the entire end-to-end experience including IVR, hold, live conversation, transfer points and evaluate multiple contacts within a time frame for a single customer

1. If your customer doesn't want to call, don't make them.

Especially if you care at all about customers under 35.  Offer similar speed of service and hours of operation across all channels, provide logged-in self service options for all 'transactional' customer interactions.

Your North Star should ALWAYS be to prevent the contact in the first place.