Interactive Voice Response

If the call center is the front door to your company, then interactive voice response is the doorbell.


Simply put, interactive voice response (or IVR, as it’s more widely known) is an automated system for collecting information from callers. It’s a customer-oriented front-end for your call center. That is, it’s a computer system that lets callers enter information in response to questions, either through a telephone keypad or the spoken word. The caller then gets some kind of information back from the system through a recorded (and digitized) voice or a synthesized voice. They can also get that information back through a connected fax system, or a website. How the information is delivered is less important than the fact that the customer can arrive, input and review data at any time, even when your center is unstaffed.


Whatever you can do with a computer, you can do with IVR. Customers can retrieve virtually any kind of data — from account balances to the weather in Chicago to the location of the nearest movie theater.


The benefits are vast. The telephone is familiar to everyone. It already has a worldwide network. Accessing information by telephone lets anyone interact with the computer from anywhere in the world. It also cuts down on the need for agents — especially when repetitive questions and answers are involved. Not only do you save on personnel costs, but also you are more likely to keep the agents you like, because their job is less boring.


Used as a front-end for an ACD, an IVR system can ask questions (such as, “what’s your product serial code?”) that help routing and enable more intelligent and informed call processing (by people or automatic systems). IVR far supersedes more rudimentary technologies (such as Caller ID) in such applications.


At one time there were no choices in how to implement it. You bought a dedicated box, integrated it with your ACD and the vendor would work with you to design your applications. Eventually you’d be up and running. So much has changed since those not-so-good old days.


The benefits today? Well for one, the market is truly open. For the most part, any ACD can integrate with any IVR system.


There are tools you can buy that let you design the system you want, called application generators, or app gens. These tools are simply software requiring industry-standard boards. Using these tools eliminates or greatly reduces reliance on IVR vendors. Such reliance (and it could get quite costly) used to be the only way to get up and running or to make program changes — unless you had knowledgeable well-paid programmers working for you. Now set-up has become inexpensive and almost simplistic.


When application generators first came out, the programming had to be done in DOS. Now everything is Windows, and development is graphical, so you don’t need to be a programmer or telephony expert.


Even if you buy a ready-made standalone system, many vendors have developed enhanced, easy-to-use developing tools (such as GUI voice editors) to make it simpler than ever to be up and running, or to make changes to the program on the fly.