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IVR Solutions - Latest Developments
What is IVR?
IVR - short for Interactive Voice Response - is a technology that automates interactions with telephone callers. Enterprises are increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the cost of common sales, service, collections, inquiry and support calls to and from their company.
Historically, IVR solutions have used pre-recorded voice prompts and menus to present information and options to callers, and touch-tone telephone keypad entry to gather responses. Modern IVR solutions also enable input and responses to be gathered via spoken words with voice recognition.
IVR solutions enable users to retrieve information including bank balances, flight schedules, product details, order status, movie show times, and more from any telephone. Additionally, IVR solutions are increasingly used to place outbound calls to deliver or gather information for appointments, past due bills, and other time critical events and activities
Programming in an IP (Internet Protocol) network environment has enabled developers to build scalable, stable, and centralized applications that can both visualize and manage vast multi-site, multimedia contact centers. The use of IP has also yielded cost savings for U.S. contact centers, according to The U.S. Contact Center Operational Review (2nd edition), a study of over 200 contact center operations conducted by the analyst firm ContactBabel (News - Alert). Most contact centers that have implemented IP report benefits: 60 percent of respondents report significant network and IT cost reduction, and 64 percent report improved ability to adjust agent configurations.
“Many contact center investment decisions emphasize short term operational cost savings”, commented Steve Morrell, author of the ContactBabel report. “Our research confirms that savings opportunities with IP are significant. But our results also suggest that when considering IP contact centers, companies should think of them as enablers whose value will be realized over time in new applications and a better customer experience,” Morrell continued. “In addition to flexibility in deploying agents, many respondents cited easier integration among different contact center applications, a benefit that strongly supports both agent efficiency and the customer experience.”
Many players are jumping into revitalizing the contact center, such as Calabrio (News - Alert), a spin-off of Spanlink Communications, which has developed a unified suite of customer interaction and workforce optimization software for next-gen, IP-based contact centers. The Calabrio Unified Desktop, for example, makes it easier for agents and supervisors to interact with tools and customers and with each other. Automated workflows minimize transaction steps, errors and handle time, and Calabrio’s Workforce Optimization software can help contact centers measure quality and performance, and make continuous improvements in the effectiveness of people and processes.
This latest offering makes it possible to replace the need to type a media title, by allowing users to just say it - making it faster to input on the iPhone.
Users can either play the title or get other results instantly.
Officials said that by using SayMedia, users can also say the name of any U.S. television show or any English movie for recognition on the iPhone, and the application then presents users with a menu of options.
When it comes to TV shows, users can record that show on their TiVo (News - Alert) or get listings of search results from YouTube and view them. Officials said that the application also allows users to search for TV shows by time of day or by TV station.
Additionally for movies, users can add a movie to their NetFlix queue, find show times at local theatres and get theatre directions. In addition, users can also read all about the movie on the IMDB Web site, or viewYouTube ( News - Alert) results for the movie including any trailers.
Metaphor Solution is a voice-enabled mobile application and Web 2.0 interactive voice response (IVR) solution for enterprises. The company’s suite of Web-configurable speech recognition applications provides businesses with access to speech IVR solutions.
Last month, company also introduced SayNCall, an enhanced voice dialing application for the iPhone that uses a voice recognition engine to provide “unparalleled levels” of reliability and accuracy.
Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anshu’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
IVR - short for Interactive Voice Response - is a technology that automates interactions with telephone callers. Enterprises are increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the cost of common sales, service, collections, inquiry and support calls to and from their company.
Historically, IVR solutions have used pre-recorded voice prompts and menus to present information and options to callers, and touch-tone telephone keypad entry to gather responses. Modern IVR solutions also enable input and responses to be gathered via spoken words with voice recognition.
IVR solutions enable users to retrieve information including bank balances, flight schedules, product details, order status, movie show times, and more from any telephone. Additionally, IVR solutions are increasingly used to place outbound calls to deliver or gather information for appointments, past due bills, and other time critical events and activities
Programming in an IP (Internet Protocol) network environment has enabled developers to build scalable, stable, and centralized applications that can both visualize and manage vast multi-site, multimedia contact centers. The use of IP has also yielded cost savings for U.S. contact centers, according to The U.S. Contact Center Operational Review (2nd edition), a study of over 200 contact center operations conducted by the analyst firm ContactBabel (News - Alert). Most contact centers that have implemented IP report benefits: 60 percent of respondents report significant network and IT cost reduction, and 64 percent report improved ability to adjust agent configurations.
“Many contact center investment decisions emphasize short term operational cost savings”, commented Steve Morrell, author of the ContactBabel report. “Our research confirms that savings opportunities with IP are significant. But our results also suggest that when considering IP contact centers, companies should think of them as enablers whose value will be realized over time in new applications and a better customer experience,” Morrell continued. “In addition to flexibility in deploying agents, many respondents cited easier integration among different contact center applications, a benefit that strongly supports both agent efficiency and the customer experience.”
Many players are jumping into revitalizing the contact center, such as Calabrio (News - Alert), a spin-off of Spanlink Communications, which has developed a unified suite of customer interaction and workforce optimization software for next-gen, IP-based contact centers. The Calabrio Unified Desktop, for example, makes it easier for agents and supervisors to interact with tools and customers and with each other. Automated workflows minimize transaction steps, errors and handle time, and Calabrio’s Workforce Optimization software can help contact centers measure quality and performance, and make continuous improvements in the effectiveness of people and processes.
This latest offering makes it possible to replace the need to type a media title, by allowing users to just say it - making it faster to input on the iPhone.
Users can either play the title or get other results instantly.
Officials said that by using SayMedia, users can also say the name of any U.S. television show or any English movie for recognition on the iPhone, and the application then presents users with a menu of options.
When it comes to TV shows, users can record that show on their TiVo (News - Alert) or get listings of search results from YouTube and view them. Officials said that the application also allows users to search for TV shows by time of day or by TV station.
Additionally for movies, users can add a movie to their NetFlix queue, find show times at local theatres and get theatre directions. In addition, users can also read all about the movie on the IMDB Web site, or viewYouTube ( News - Alert) results for the movie including any trailers.
Metaphor Solution is a voice-enabled mobile application and Web 2.0 interactive voice response (IVR) solution for enterprises. The company’s suite of Web-configurable speech recognition applications provides businesses with access to speech IVR solutions.
Last month, company also introduced SayNCall, an enhanced voice dialing application for the iPhone that uses a voice recognition engine to provide “unparalleled levels” of reliability and accuracy.
Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anshu’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
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