Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) for effective CRM

What are IVRs?

IVR system is an integration (CTI).

example

of

computer-telephone

Allows callers to use their telephone keypad or voice commands to retrieve and/or provide information without assistance from trained specialists. Presents callers with a list of options and questions about the nature of their call, provides answers to frequently asked questions, and directs the calls for further assistance to trained specialists. The main purpose of the system is to deal with the large numbers of calls that some organizations of a particular nature can experience and is humanly impossible to handle. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is the most widely used progressive kind of call centre software today.

TYPES OF IVRS
1. OnPremise IVRs Onpremise IVRs are generally located with Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that support contact centre operations.

2. Hosted IVRs Hosted IVR services are provided by thirdparty providers who leverage their technology infrastructure and management expertise to serve many customers.

COMMON IVR APPLICATIONS

Voice Activated Dialling(VAD):Commonly used to route calls within an organisation. Hence it has replaced the receptionist or switchboard operator. With an interactive voice response, callers are routed to the right department.

IVR systems are ideal for retrieving simple, real-time information from a database. Movie times are a good example.
IVR systems are also useful for Sales and Marketing departments. Political pollsters can use the outgoing call features of IVR systems. IVR systems can also be used as electronic notification systems. An interesting use of IVR technology is for transcribing medical records and clinical trials.

Entertainment and Information

Automobile Systems for hands free operation

Mobile Pay-As-You-Go account funding; registration; mobile purchases, such as ring tones and logos
Banking balance, payments, transfers, transaction history Retail & Entertainment orders, bookings, credit & debit card payments

Utilities meter readings

Travel ticket booking, flight information, check-in

Weather forecasts, water, road and ice conditions

OTHER USES OF IVRS

Save Time and Money

Making callers and customers feel like they are being attended to.(Quick Answer) IVR systems don't sleep and take breaks and works 24*7.

An IVR system can make a small company look bigger.

Subscription IVR hosting plans make it easier for businesses and organizations to use these automated phone services.

ADVANTAGES OF USING IVRS

Basic IVR systems are less expensive and instructions are simple- like yes or no (voice command) or press 1 or press 2 (dial pad command).
Advanced systems will ask for the callers name, address, date of birth and recognize the answers, and thus speed up the whole process. IVR systems are normally installed in-house and maintained by the IVR provider who integrates the system through the clients network.

IMPLEMENTATION OF IVRS

Many people simply dislike talking to machines.

Menus are too long. In some cases voice prompts are hard to understand. People are particularly averse to receiving automated calls as part of telemarketing campaigns or polling.

DIS-ADVANTAGES /CHALLENGES OF IVRS

STRUCTURE OF IVRS

 -The

most common way for a phone to communicate with a computer is through the tones generated by each key on the telephone keypad. These are known as dual-tone multifrequency (DTMF) signals.
-A computer needs special hardware called a telephony board or telephony card to understand the DTMF signals produced by a phone. Recently IVR systems are using speech recognition software to recognise voice commands and are based on VXML (Voice Extensible Mark-up Language)

HOW DOES IVRS WORK?

Telephone network -- Incoming and outgoing phone calls are routed through the regular Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

TCP/IP network -- A standard Internet network, like the ones that provide Internet and intranet connectivity in an office.
VXML telephony server -- This special server sits between the phone network and the Internet network. It serves as an interpreter, or gateway, so that callers can interface with the IVR software and access information on databases. The server also contains the software that controls functions like text-to-speech, voice recognition and DTMF recognition. Web/application server -- This is where the IVR software applications live. There might be several different applications on the same server: one for customer service, one for outgoing sales calls, one for voice-to-text transcription. All of these application are written in VXML. The Web/application server is connected to the VXML telephony server over the TCP/IP network.

Databases -- Databases contain real-time information that can be accessed by the IVR applications. If you call your credit card company and want to know your current balance, the IVR application retrieves the current balance total from a database. Same for flight arrival times, movie times, et cetera. One or more databases can be linked to the Web/application server over the TCP/IP network.

A company or organization can choose to purchase all of this hardware and software and run it in-house, or it can subscribe to an IVR-hosting service. A hosting service charges a monthly fee to use its servers and IVR software. The hosting service helps the organization customize an IVR system that best fits its needs and provides technical support should anything go wrong.
Some of the most popular IVR service providers: Voxeo, PlumVoice, and inContact

IVRS providers

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Selecting the right kind of menu options for automation. Transacting in a way that makes sense to the caller. Adopting a customer perspective. Thinking about the end-to-end customer experience. Bringing the contact centre and self-service systems together.

Choosing the right IVRS