Adding On More Features Interactive Voice Response

IVR rarely stands by itself — it’s the perfect integration technology for a whole host of voice and data applications. Add-on features like speech recognition, text-to-speech and fax-on-demand are becoming popular. It’s important to choose a system with open integration so you can always add these features.

In narrowing your search down to the best vendor, look at the application you need, the services the company provides for support, and the image and reputation of the company.

Adding speech recognition is a time saver — especially when you have several prompts. A caller who knows what he wants to do can just say “claims department” and be connected. And as the Internet takes on a stronger role as a call center front-end, more and more companies will be offering access through all kinds of call center/computer telephony products. Some IVR vendors have already started.

Perhaps recognizing that the speech front-end is going to be at least as important as the touch tone interface in years to come, speech and IVR vendors are making hasty arrangements to work together, at least in presenting their products in an integrated fashion to potential customers.

Intervoice-Brite is acting as VAR for Nuance’s speech recognition engine, for example. Nuance’s speech rec is good, and is used in some notable high-traffic applications. Brite sells into some of the same markets, with large-scale IVR systems for government, financial services and telecom companies.

Combining with Nuance allows them to offer the base platform for front-ending the call center without having to develop speech rec on their own. It gives their customers the ability to choose speech rec as one option in front of the center, among others, that can include telephony input, Web and other CTI-enabled connections.

IVR companies tend to be very good at connecting with other companies for complementary product offerings — recall that several years ago they were among the first call center vendors to start building Web and email hooks into their systems, at the application generator level. Not so that they could start selling Web apps, mind you, but so that their customers could build them for themselves, or connect third-party service systems to the end user.

Quick Tips

1.     Know Your Callers. To develop the best caller interface, look at the most common questions, comments and information your callers request. This should guide you in determining the types of inquiries you should let your IVR system handle. Getting a good handle on who your customers are and the reasons why they call can lead you toward an IVR system with applications specific to your needs.

2.     Use IVR as a way to handle an especially large volume of calls for special applications. If Monday morning is your busiest time, rather than adding staff, use IVR to handle the extra calls. Or, instead of staffing up for special promotions and offers that you know will heat up the phone lines, consider ways you can use IVR to handle the callers who don’t need to speak to a live agent.

3.     You should not overuse IVR or overprogram voice prompts. Think of the application as a tree with branches. Too many prompts at once will confuse callers, or by the time they get to “press 6 for X” they will have forgotten what one, two and three announced. Three or four prompts is enough. After callers press a corresponding number you can have another three or four menu prompts lead to more options based on their first selection.

4.     Always make sure that during business hours callers can press 0 to reach a live operator. They are, mostly, not stupid. They will try 0, and *, and #, and even pretend to have a rotary phone to avoid standing in the queue. Don’t treat them like they are a mass of cattle to be herded towards your destination. The call costs you next to nothing, until an agent gets involved. Give them something to do, some knowledge of what they have access to, and what they’ll need to provide when they finally do get to talk to someone.

5.     Don’t tell them to enter their account number or other information through the keypad unless you really, really intend to use it. Nothing makes people angrier, and makes you look more incompetent, than to have your agent ask them for something they just entered.

What To Think Of When You Shop Interactive Voice Response

Evaluating various systems? Here are some selection and installation tips to keep in mind when looking over the vendor brochures.

1.  Choose a system that lets you easily add more telephone interfaces and voice storage capacity — you should always anticipate growth. Line capacity describes the number of simultaneous conversations the system can handle. This requirement is a function of anticipated traffic, peak volume demands and the tolerance of the caller receiving a busy signal or a ring-back of more than two or three rings.

2.  User interfaces are typically subjectively evaluated during the system selection process, and are a function of the script and recordings. Recordings are usually first created by the installer, but updates are maintained via recordings made after the installation. Thus, the ease with which the system administrator can manage recordings is critical.

3.  The product should allow high quality recordings to be made directly with a microphone or telephone set, but should also support recordings made by commercial studios.

4.  System usage reports are critical in preventing a business using an IVR system from isolating itself from its callers. The system must be capable of supplying informative reports about the nature and disposition of incoming calls, such as:

§  How long did people stay on the line?

§  How many hung up without making any selections?

§  What items were selected most often?

§  How many after-hours callers left messages for an agent to return their call?

5.  Make sure the vendor understands exactly what you want. Tell them exactly what you want your customers to hear. Check references so you’ll know their history of service and support.

6.  Your system should not force regular callers to listen to lengthy prompts. Callers should be able to bypass recordings and skip to the prompt they want to hear.

Increasingly, thanks to better integration between IVR and the switch, you can offer IVR as one option to callers languishing in the hold queue.

Why You Should Use IVR

This is a no-brainer. This is perhaps the most important peripheral technology you can implement. Depending on the application, you can siphon off from 20% to as much as 60% of your calls, or even more. There’s no part of the customer interaction that isn’t helped by the interactivity. The whole thing operates more smoothly because you’ve obtained some facilitating information from the caller. Sometimes that’s nothing more than just a call’s purpose — sales or service, Windows or Mac.

If you can get them to input their account number, you are armed with a database extract, and instantly you’ve created a CTI application that can bring rich screens full of information to the agent desktop.

Or you can deliver that information directly to the caller, no agent necessary, and improve your cost structure even more. Call centers are constantly caught between two contradictory imperatives: reduce costs and improve service. IVR is like a gift from the gods for both sides of that equation.

The fact that IVR is bundled with (or easily added on to) almost every switch sold in the last five years should make it an even easier decision. But if you still need convincing, here are a few thoughts.

IVR is widely accepted by callers. As the technology has matured, there has been more emphasis on correct implementation. Like eliminating “voice mail jail,” that annoying state wherein callers can’t press zero and exit the system. When badly designed scripts are eliminated, callers like the result.

IVR keeps your call center open 24 hours a day. Start from the assumption that you’re never going to be able to hire as many staff as you’d like. Training costs are high, and with turnover high also, you’ve always got to have inexperienced reps in the pipeline. IVR can take the sting out of that process by giving callers an option during periods of unexpected high volume. And it’s effective. IVR gives caller a nice impression of your company when they can get information at 2 a.m. IVR never calls in sick, takes vacations, breaks or lunch.

You can also use an IVR system to make handling calls easier for agents. One vendor’s IVR system lets callers listen to company offerings, and when they hear something they would like to order or book, they just say “agent” and the system connects them to a live agent. Agents then hear an excerpt of what the caller expressed interest in so they know how to handle the call.

IVR can increase call volume. In one application over a six month period the call volume handled increased more than five times (from 30,000 to over 150,000 calls per month) At the same time, the number of messages left for agents remained relatively constant.

As voice processing systems take over more calls, the pie grows as well. These systems seem to create their own traffic. This causes problems for businesses that try to cost-justify IVR purchases through the number of staff positions they will be able to cut, because as an effective application creates new and better service, people will use more of it.

It’s important to remember, with all this talk about cost savings and being open 24/7, that IVR can’t replace humans, it can only assist them. In a well-designed IVR implementation, you’ve automated the transactions that can be easily done, leaving call center agents with the calls that require human skill and intellect. Some companies have gotten into trouble by trying to handle all calls through technology. The experts say that this is just not possible. Some calls will always require the kind of assistance that only a human being can offer.

Don’t think of IVR as an all-or-nothing situation. Just because a system can do something doesn’t mean you have to use it all the time.

IVR is cost-effective. Call center managers tell us an IVR system pays for itself in less than a year. That makes sense when you consider the number of questions it can answer without the aid of a rep. Most of the questions it answers are routine inquiries that would eat up valuable agent time. With IVR, agents can be left to handle only the more complicated questions or the callers who request a live agent.

What also makes IVR cost-effective is its flexibility. With most systems you can start small and just add lines as call volume grows. It’s not uncommon, for example, to find that systems are bundled with pre-built software “templates” that you can snap together to create applications which you can then update when your needs change.

It gives callers control. Callers have options with IVR. They can press a key to reach the department they need, hold for a live agent, or get what they need without having to speak to a rep. A note of caution, though: during working hours, make sure callers can get out of the IVR system to reach a live operator. It’s nothing but frustrating to press 0 trying to get a live voice and instead being disconnected or forced to listen to voice prompts again.

Not having a live operator available is only acceptable during after hours. In such a case voice prompts should announce something like “Thank you for calling XYZ company. While no one can take your call during these hours, you can press one to hear information on A, two to get information on B faxed,” and so forth. A final prompt should announce “Press 5 if you would like to leave a message for a return phone call during office hours. Thank you for calling.”

You can create special temporary applications. You can tie your IVR system into advertising campaigns. Each month you can offer different specials. Run an advertisement on television, in a newspaper or even in the yellow pages. Then, when callers reach the IVR system you can have a menu choice directly related to your ad.

When the special ends, you can return voice prompts back to normal. The benefit is that a large volume of callers gets fast, consistent information without bombarding your agents.

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.