Interactive Voice Response

01.09.2010 | Author: xiaohe | Posted in Business and Industry

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History

The blueprint for IVR began in 1941, when Bell System developed a new tone dialing methodology. Bell unveiled the first telephone that could dial area codes using Dual Tone Multi Frequency DTMF technology at the Seattle World Fair in 1962. DTMF telephones enabled the use of inband signaling.

Despite the fact that more companies began using the system in the 1970s to automate tasks in call centers, the technology was still costly and complicated which made for low market penetration. However, by the 1980s a number of new competitors entered the market and uptake of IVR technology started to increase.

When call centers began to migrate to multimedia contact centers in the late 90’s, companies began to invest in web-enablement and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) with IVR systems. IVR became vital for call centers deploying universal queuing and routing solutions and acted as an agent which collected customer data to enable intelligent routing decisions.

Having remained technologically static since its development in the 1980s, speech recognition started to become more common and cheaper to deploy. This was due to increased Computer Processing Power and the migration of Speech applications from propriety code to the VXML standard. The introduction of the VXML standard also simplified the integration process between IVR systems and any back end hosts.

Typical uses

IVR systems are typically used to service high call volumes, reduce cost and improve the customer experience. Examples of typical IVR applications are: telephone banking, televoting, and credit card transactions. Large companies use IVR services to extend the business hours of operation.

Call centers use IVR systems to identify and segment callers. The ability to identify customers allows the ability to tailor services according to the customer profile. It also allows the option of choosing automated services. Information can be fed to the caller allowing choices such as: wait in the queue, choose an automated service, or request a callback (at a suitable time and telephone number). The use of computer telephony integration (CTI) will allow the IVR system to look up the caller line identification (CLI) on a network database and identify the caller. This is currently accurate for about 80% of inbound calls. In the cases where CLI is withheld or unavailable, the caller can be asked to identify themselves by other methods such as a PIN or password. The use of DNIS will ensure that the correct application and language is executed by the IVR system.

CTI allows a contact center or organisation to gather information about the caller as a means of directing their inquiry to an appropriate agent. CTI can also extract important or relevant information about the individual customer from the database, making for a more effective and efficient service.

The use of IVR and voice automation enables a company to improve its customer service and lower its costs, due to the fact that callers queries can be resolved without the cost of a live agent who, in turn, can be directed to deal with specific areas of the service. If the caller does not find the information they need, or require further assistance, the call is then transferred to an agent who can deal with them directly through CTI integration. This makes for a more efficient system in which agents have more time to deal with complex interactions, for example, customer retention, up selling, cross selling and issue resolution. This way, the customer is more likely to be satisfied with a personalised service and the interaction is likely to be more fulfilling and rewarding for the agent, as opposed to dealing with basic enquiries that require yes/no responses, such as obtaining customer details. Employee satisfaction is important in the telecommunications industry due to the fast turnover of staff, IVR is therefore one way of retaining a workforce and allowing them to do a more effective job.

IVR also enables customer prioritisation. In a system whereby individual customers may have a different status, for example, a bronze, gold or platinum card holder, the service will automatically prioritise the individuals call and, in the case of a platinum card holder, move them to the front of the calling queue.

Finally, IVR may be used by survey organizations for asking more sensitive questions where the investigators are concerned that a respondent might feel less comfortable providing these answers to a human interlocutor (such as questions about drug use or sexual behavior). In some cases an IVR system can be used in the same survey in conjunction with a human interviewer. For example, during the survey the interviewer might inform the respondent that for the next series of questions they will be sent to an IVR system to continue or complete the interview.

Voice-Activated Dialers

(VAD) Voice-activated IVR systems are now used to replace the switchboard or PABX (Private Automatic Branch eXchange) operators and are used in many hospitals and large businesses to reduce the caller waiting time. An additional function is the ability to allow external callers to page hospital staff and transfer the inbound call to the paged person.

Entertainment and Information

The largest installed IVR platforms are used for applications such as tele-voting on TV game shows such as Pop Idol and Big Brother which can generate enormous call spikes. Often the network provider will have to deploy Call gapping in the Public network to prevent Network overload.

The following are some of the more common uses of an IVR:

Mobile (Pay as you go Top up)

Telephone Banking (Balance, payments, and transfers)

Mobile Purchases (particularly for mobile content, such as ringtones and logos)

Caller identification and routing

Order Placements (Credit Card Payments)

Airline (Ticket booking, Flight arrivals, Flight departures, Checkin)

Adult entertainment (Dating, Chat line etc)

Weather forecasts

Anonymous Access

IVR systems also allow callers to obtain data relatively anonymously. Hospitals and Clinics have used IVR systems to allow callers to receive anonymous access to test results. This is information that could easily be handled by a person but the IVR system is used to preserve privacy and avoid potential embarrassment of sensitive information or test results. Users are given a passcode to access their results.

Clinical Trials

IVR systems are used by pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations to conduct clinical trials and manage the large volumes of data generated. The caller will respond to questions in their preferred language and their responses will be logged into a database and possibly recorded at the same time to confirm authenticity. Applications include patient randomization and drug supply management. They are also used in recording patient diaries.

Outbound Calling

IVR systems can be used for outbound calls, as IVR systems are more intelligent than Dialler systems, they can recognise different line conditions.

RNA Ring No Answer

Answered by Voicemail or Answering machine (In this circumstances they can leave a message)

Fax Tone (IVR can leave a Fax Message based upon a TIFF Image)

Answer (IVR can tell the customer who is calling and ask them to wait for an agent)

Recognise Divert messages and abandon call.

IVR uses Call Progress Detection to monitor Line conditions, and report to the IVR Database.

Technologies Used

DTMF signals (entered from the telephone keypad) and natural language speech recognition interpret the caller’s response to voice prompts.

Other technologies include the ability to speak complex and dynamic information such as an e-mail, news report or weather information using Text-To-Speech (TTS). TTS is computer generated synthesized speech that is no longer the robotic voice generally associated with computers. Real voices create the speech in tiny fragments that are spliced together (concatenated) before being played to the caller.

An IVR can be utilized in several different ways:

Equipment installed on the customer premise

Equipment installed in the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network)

Application service provider (ASP).

Hosted IVR

A simple voicemail system is different from IVR in that it is person to person whereas an IVR is person to computer. IVR voiceforms can be used to provide a more complex voicemail experience to the caller. For example, the IVR could ask if the caller wishes to hear, edit, forward or remove a message that was just recorded.

An automatic call distributor (ACD) is often the first point of contact when calling many larger businesses. An ACD uses digital storage devices to play greetings or announcements, but typically routes a caller without prompting for input. An IVR can play announcements and request an input from the caller. This information can be used to profile the caller and route the call to an agent with a particular skillset. (A skillset is a function applied to a group of call-center agents with a particular skill.)

Interactive voice response can be used to front-end a call center operation by identifying the needs of the caller. Information can be obtained from the caller such as account numbers. Answers to simple questions such as account balances or pre-recorded information can be provided without operator intervention. Account numbers from the IVR are often compared to caller ID data for security reasons and additional IVR responses are required if the caller ID data does not match the account record.

IVR call flows are created in a variety of ways. A traditional IVR depended upon proprietary programming or scripting languages, whereas modern IVR applications are structured similar to WWW pages, using VoiceXML, CCXML, SRGS, SALT or T-XML languages. The ability to use XML developed applications allows a Web server to act as an application server, freeing the developer to focus on the call flow. It was widely believed that developers would no longer require specialized programming skills, however this has been proven to be misguided as IVR applications need to understand the human reaction to the application dialogue. This is the difference between a good user experience and IVR hell[citation needed].

Higher level IVR development tools are available in recent years to further simplify the application development process. A call flow diagram can be drawn with a GUI tool and the application code (VoiceXML or SALT) can be automatically generated. In addition, these tools normally provide extension mechanisms for software integration, such as HTTP interface to web site and Java interface for connecting to a database.

In telecommunications, an audio response unit (ARU) is a device that provides synthesized voice responses to touch-tone keypresses (DTMF) by processing calls based on (a) the call-originator input, (b) information received from a database, and (c) information in the incoming call, such as the time of day.

ARUs increase the number of information calls handled and to provide consistent quality in information retrieval.

Outsourcing vs. Contact Center Automation

Contact Centers are very expensive to run, and can be seen as a drain on companies’ operations.[citation needed] Contact Centres are usually seen as Cost Centres, however the ability to upsell services and products can reduce operational expenditure.

Methods of reducing Contact Center running costs include outsourcing and automation. Outsourcing to other countries can reduce operational expenditure by as much as 30%, however, differences in culture and language can prove problematic for customers, whose dissatisfaction can lead to customer complaints and loss of business. Also it is more difficult to upsell to customers from foreign Contact Centres.

Automation in a Contact Center can also reduce operational expenditure by around 30% though the introduction of technologies such as customer profiling, CTI, and IVR using speech recognition. The use of automation in the contact center promotes efficiency, allowing contact centers to be located in the country from which the call is originated. Customer satisfaction can be monitored by the use of customer survey applications. The information from survey applications can be used to improve customer service.

VoIP

The increased usage of VoIP in voice networks is likely to affect how IVR will be used in voice networks, this is due to the introduction of protocols such as SIP. The introduction of SIP means that point to point communications is no longer restricted to voice calls but can now be extended to multimedia technologies such as video. This will bring a new meaning to automated services as IVR extends its reach to video calls. Many IVR manufacturers are currently working on IVVR (Interactive Voice and Video Response) systems, especially for the mobile phone networks. The use of video will give IVR systems the ability to use graphical and video information to assist the caller.

The introduction of video IVR may allow systems in the future the ability to read emotions and facial expressions. It may be used to identify the caller, using technology such as Iris scan or other biometric means. Recordings of the caller may be stored to monitor certain transactions, and will be used to reduce identity fraud.

Unified Communications in the SIP Contact Center

With the introduction of SIP Contact Centers, Automation has finally come of age. Calls arriving at a SIP contact Center must now be queued against a SIP IVR system. Call Control in a SIP Contact Center is controlled by VXML scripting which is an extension of the language used to write modern IVR Applications. As calls are queued in the SIP Contact Center the IVR system can provide Treatment, Automation, Wait for a fixed period, or play music. Inbound Calls to a SIP Contact Center must be queued or terminated against a SIP end Point. In addition SIP IVR systems can be used to replace agents directly by the use of BBUA (Back to Back User agents).

Interactive Messaging Response (IMR)

As communications have migrated to multimedia so has Automation. The introduction of Instant Messaging (IM) in Contact Centers is starting to take off. Agents can handle up to 6 different IM conversations at the same time and so agent productivity is increasing. IVR systems are now starting to handle IM conversations using existing Speech Recognition Technology. This is different from email handling as email automated response is based on key word spotting. IM conversations are different to email as IM is conversational. The use of texting abbreviations and smilies requires different grammars than those currently used for speech recognition. IM is also starting to replace texting on Multimdeia Mobile handsets and is expected to become more widely used.

Hosted vs. On-Premise IVR

With the introduction of Web services into the Contact Center, integration has been simplified. The use of Web based applications allow IVR applications to be hosted remotely from the Contact Center. This allows the use of hosted IVR applications using speech to be made available to smaller Contact Centers across the globe and is likely to lead to an expansion of ASP (Application Service Providers).

IVR applications can also be hosted in the public network, which do not require contact centre integration. This will include public announcement messages or message services for small business. It is also possible to use two prong IVR services where the initial IVR application is used to route the call to the appropriate contact centre. This can be used to balance loading across multiple contact centres or provide business continuity in the event of system outage.

Criticism

IVR is sometimes criticized as being unhelpful and difficult to use due to poor design and lack of appreciation of the caller’s needs. Some callers object to providing voice response to an automated system and prefer speaking with a human respondent. Companies have also been criticized for using IVR to reduce operational costs but not offering similar services using agents. Such methods tend to frustrate customers who feel that their right to speak to an agent is being restricted. Such services are used in debt recovery and giveaways (Such as Concert tickets, Satellite/Cable Receivers etc).

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