Interactive Voice Response (IVR) provides an automated interaction with telephone callers. A number of companies employ IVR solutions to minimize the cost of regular sales, collections, inquiries, service and support calls made to and from the company.

In the past, IVR solutions have employed pre-recorded voice notifications and menus to offer information and alternatives to callers, and use touch tone telephone keypad access to collect replies. Today, advanced IVR solutions are capable of accommodating input and replies collected through spoken words that come with voice recognition features.

IVR solutions have several useful capabilities, including the ability to recover information such as flight schedules, order status, bank balance inquiries, product details, movie screening times, etc. from any telephone. IVR solutions are also frequently used by customers for outbound calls to transport or collect information needed for past due bills, appointments, and other crucial activities or affairs.

While human interaction is not necessary because the IVR system permits limited access to a particular database to provide the information or service that customers need, occasionally an option to speak with a live operator during specified business hours is available. In addition, IVR systems are employed to notify non-emergency issues regarding utility services, as well as to schedule future meetings with government or state offices. The integration of text to speech capacity enables IVR systems to bring practical information – news, traffic, weather or stock reports.

Another function of IVR systems is surveying, campaigning and polling. Specific pre-recorded ‘yes’ ‘no’ and ‘undecided’ questions are asked, and voice and/or keypad responses are collected.

Traditionally, IVR systems are set up in house, but they can also be installed by hiring outsourced solution providers (OSPs). IVR service providers sustain the system on their business site by incorporating it into the customer’s network. While this means no additional infrastructure is required in your premise and you gain a reliable IVR customer service team, you lose full control over crucial tasks, and risk adding features that do not match your business model.

In order to provide a user friendly and convenient service to your customers, it is vital that your IVR system is well designed. The objective is to ensure that the customer obtains the necessary information or service desired in a few easy steps.

The most attractive characteristic of an IVR service is its cost-efficiency. With today’s advanced, intuitive systems, and pre-recorded information, the need for an operator or receptionist is almost completely eradicated. The only drawback is that not all customers like interacting with an automated computer system and prefer instead to speak with a live person. Others may have speech problems which may cause the voice recognition software not to understand what is being said.

IVR Platforms

At their most basic, IVR platforms offer the ability to play and document system prompts, collect touch tone input, have the capability to distinguish spoken output for voice callers (text to speech) and move IVR calls to a particular telephone or call center representative.

IVR Applications

IVR applications lead the platform to notify callers, draw input, and move callers to other lines. Created either by an enterprise, IVR development shop, or by organizations providing IVR applications, they also possess the ability to contact application and current back-end servers to facilitate recovery of records and information.

Back-end servers

Back-end servers are the current and active enterprise servers that store the necessary corporate or customer data. It can take account of mainframes, databases, Java and other application servers as well as third party solutions and information.

Telephony Infrastructure

Telephony infrastructure is comprised of telephone lines, Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs) for call centers, and call switching equipment. Telephone lines designated to accommodate IVR can be regular analog lines, digital ISDN lines or digital T1. These lines are linked on one side to the IVR platform, and on the opposite side, linked to the call switching tool (consisting of Voice over IP entry, corporate PBXs, Telco switches, or directly to a call center network through an ACD.)

Companies looking for ways to reduce the cost of calls to and from their company—whether from common sales, collections, or inquiries—are turning to a technology called IVR. This is short for Interactive Voice Response, and is a technology that automates interactions with phone callers.

Unlike older versions of IVR, modern IVR solutions can gather input and responses through spoken words with voice recognition. This is on top of the traditional touch-tone keypad entries from options presented through pre-recorded voice prompts and menus.

Today, information such as bank balances, product details, movie show times, status of your orders, and flight schedules, can all be retrieved using IVR. This service is also used to make outbound calls for information delivery, or to gather information about appointments and other time critical events and activities.

Basic Requirements for Successful IVR

IVR Platforms

An IVR solution needs an IVR platform. This hardware and software platform is akin to a computer program that needs an operating system and a computer in order for it to do its job.

IVR platforms, at the very least, play and record prompts and gather touch-tone input. At most, they can transfer calls to a telephone or call center agent, recognize spoken words from callers through voice recognition, and translate text into spoken output for callers via a “text-to-speech” service.

IVR Applications

If IVR platforms are the operating system and computers, IVR applications are the programs that control and respond to it. IVR applications issue commands to the platform to respond to callers, gather input, and transfer callers to other phones. They can even command the platform to call on existing back-end database and application servers to retrieve records and information for the caller.

There are many different kinds of IVR applications. They are mostly developed by enterprises, by an IVR development shop, or by companies that offer pre-made IVR applications.

Back-end servers

Customer or corporate data can all be found in back-end servers. These servers are existing enterprise servers that can include databases, mainframes, third-party information solutions and services, and Java or other application servers.

Telephony Infrastructure

IVRs use telephony infrastructure, which are composed of telephone lines, call switching equipment, and call center automatic call distributors. The telephone lines needed vary from standard analog lines, digital T1, or digital ISDN lines.

The IVR platform connects to these lines on both sides to connect to call switching equipment. The call switching equipment includes Telco switches, VoIP gateways, corporate PBXs, and sometimes—using ACDs—go directly to call centers.