How one IVR change eliminated 2.7 million inbound calls a year

About this episode

Wes Dudley discusses his experience in transforming customer experience through strategic IVR changes and technology investments.

Wes Dudley has spent over 30 years leading CX at scale, including JCPenney, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and Broad River Retail, the largest licensee of Ashley Furniture. He moved ticket resolution from nine days to eight hours, eliminated 2.7 million inbound calls annually with a single IVR change, and built a 750-seat contact center during COVID while call volume jumped from 16,000 to 115,000 calls a day overnight. This conversation covers the specific decisions behind those numbers, including how he sequences people, process, and technology investments, when to keep humans in the loop on high-stakes interactions, and what he looks for in a technology partner after seeing both sides of good and bad ones. Topics Discussed: Why AI without a defined plan consistently underdelivers Moving ticket resolution from 9 days to 8 hours through routing, not technology Eliminating 2.7 million calls annually with one IVR implementation Three-tier triage model built to absorb a 7x overnight call surge during COVID PPT framework for sequencing people, process, and technology decisions How the nature of high-emotion purchases should shape your AI and human handoff design CX All-Stars identity…

People in this episode

Guest: Wes Dudley

Topics covered

• AI implementation
• customer experience
• IVR systems
• ticket resolution
• call center management
• technology partnerships

Keywords

• CX
• call volume
• human interaction
• process improvement

Mentioned in this episode

Products: CX All-Stars, Ashley Furniture, JCPenney, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams

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