IVR Solutions

This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to IVR Development and custom IVR software and products. Business phone systems and toll free answering systems (generally 800 numbers and their equivalent) are very popular for service and sales organizations, allowing customers and prospects to call your organization anywhere in the country. The PACER and WIZARD IVR System is just one of many DSC call center phone system features..

What Is IVR?. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) processes inbound phone calls, plays recorded messages including information extracted from databases and the internet, and potentially routes calls to either inhouse service agents or transfers the caller to an outside extension.

Contact DSC today. to learn more about our IVR services and IVR application development software.

Well Designed Dialog Prompts Are Polite, Informative and to the Point

By Myra Hambleton

The following is an extract from the article "Directing the Dialog: The Art of IVR" by Myra Hanbleton.

"User-friendly speech recognition systems would seem to be an oxymoron. After all, isn't speech technology supposed to be the final word in man-machine interfacing? What could be more simple than speaking to a computer in a normal voice?

For those using speech technology in interactive voice response (IVR) applications, this misperception has led to some serious headaches. Too often, people assume that directed dialog is something that can simply be added to the technology. In reality, it is quite complex and altogether different from the touch-tone systems that are familiar to both developers and consumers.

Most of today's IVR applications still employ a dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) user interface, most commonly known as touch-tone. It is important for anyone who wants to add speech to an IVR application to understand the fundamental differences between speech and touch-tone.

The rigid hierarchy of touch-tone technology places inherent limitations on the kind of information that can be received, and equally important, on the order in which that information is received. With a touch-tone application, users progress through a series of menus, entering a numeric response at each level, until they get the information they desire or are connected to the individual or department they are trying to contact. If callers want to conduct more than one transaction, they are typically returned to the main menu and forced to go through the process again.

For example, a bank customer calls to get information about their checking account. First the customer wants to determine the account balance. After entering a customer ID or PIN number, the caller chooses "account balances" from the main menu and "checking account" from the second menu. In order to find out if a check has cleared, the caller has to return to the main menu and choose "transactions" then choose "cleared checks" from the second menu and so on. This call could be diagrammed using a traditional flow chart with its familiar "tree" pattern, with the user branching off at the menu where a numeric selection is made....."

Myra went on to say

"Many factors are driving the emergence of speech in the IVR market. The first is spiraling labor costs as the cost of employing live customer service agents increases. At the same time, there is pressure for organizations to reduce customer services expenses. Another factor to consider is call volume. The more calls an organization gets, the faster a speech application will pay for itself. In this era of mergers and consolidations, customer service organizations are dealing with larger and larger call volumes. Speech-enabled call automation systems also increase caller acceptance by providing the friendliest and fastest self-service alternative to speaking with a live agent.

Finally, speech solutions allow organizations to automate transactions that are too complex for touch-tone, including bill payment, stock trading and reservations.

Looking forward, speech will become both cheaper and more versatile as the cost of processing decreases and the size of recognized vocabularies increases. As IVR systems become increasingly robust, the price of natural speech applications will decrease while their viability increases. In the interim, directed dialog will extend the power of IVRs and save millions of dollars for customer service operations.

Making the technology user-friendly is not simple, but it is the key to winning customer acceptance. Directed dialog may not be the final word in man-machine interfacing, but it's a step in that direction because developers with the right tools and expertise can design directed dialog applications that customers actually prefer over live agents.