Improved customer service is an ongoing quest for today’s organizations.  Trying to meet the needs of customers and respond to potential customers in a timely and efficient manner is crucial to this quest.  Maintaining a twenty-four staff is not an option for some organizations and outsourcing can be costly to small and medium business.   

A technology that is meeting the needs of many organizations is Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

IVR is a software application that accepts a combination of voice telephone input and touch-tone keypad selections, providing appropriate responses in the form of voice, fax, callback, e-mail and other media. 

For smaller organizations, IVR can be utilized as a “24-hour contact center” to provide information for callers.  For example, a customer of a bank may call a number to receive account information by responding to inquiries by the system using a touch-tone keypad to receive information. 

IVR can also help callers reach the desired department of an organization, or help a caller get forwarded to the appropriate call center agent for service.  In addition, it can help reduce costs and improve customer service for organizations.

A new tool that can be used with IVR is Advanced Speech Recognition, which enables callers to speak rather than choose numerical options.  Advanced Speech Recognition will convert speech responses to digital signals, which are then processed by a computer system.