Many people do not like IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) system simply because it is a ‘machine’, not human and they do not like the idea of ‘talking’ to machine! But there is an IVR application with whom many would like to deal with, instead of dealing with an human agent, the service is IVR for payment reminder!

One may forget to make a payment for utility bills, credit card bills or any other bill for many reasons! It is always embarrassing for a person to be reminded of pending unpaid bills! And if the payment reminder is done by human agent, many people feel uncomfortable with the knowledge that ‘other person’ too know know his secret of not paying bills!

There may be instances where a person is simply unable to pay bills! And with recent economic problems all around the world, many may have been victims of job loss and then one may become genuinely unable to pay bills! When a person goes through such distress, being reminded by a human agent of pending unpaid bills might result in more depression!

But outbound IVR for reminding of pending payment would not embarrass a person so much as a call from human agent would! Recently, I had a discussion with my friend Rahul Mishra, who blogs about Indian Real Estate about how many people default payment for their housing loans or installment for their flats during construction of apartments! While some people love to be reminded, but majority of the people feel embarrassed! And automated IVR would not embarrass a person as he/she would be reminded by a machine called IVR with no emotion, heart or feelings!

So, and outbound IVR for reminding pending bills is one IVR application in which a person may not like to speak to a human agent! Here are my few ideas:-

1. Everyone should use outbound IVR for reminding a person for pending unpaid bills at least three or four times before any human agent or recovery agents calls up in order to avoid embarrassing a customer!

2. During this call, the person should be given options like press 1 if already paid, 2 if will pay next week and does not want to be reminded again in between, 3 if he wants some one to collect payment from his house etc. This way, payment reminder service would be delightful even for defaulting customers!

3. Outbound IVR can also be able to transfer the call to human agent of the called party desires so!

So, in order to recover money or take payment from your customers, are you treating them cruelly ? Use outbound IVR to remind them gently and treat your customers humanly!

Recently, I came across an interesting article about usage of IVR in Economic Times, India. This was about simple outbound IVR used for monitoring one of the largest welfare scheme in India, Mid-day meal scheme. In this scheme, students in primary schools in India are offered free meals!

This welfare scheme has been successful in India and it has increased enrollment of students in primary schools, improved attendance as well as reduced drop outs.

Interesting Outbound IVR

According to the article, most populous state in India, Uttar Pradesh, is experimenting with IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) system to monitor implementation of Mid Day Meal scheme. After mobile phone boom in India, telephone connectivity has reached almost all villages, small towns in India. Outbound IVR makes outgoing to calls automatically during midday to teachers of primary schools and prompts to enter number of students present on that day. Their response is recorded using DTMF (Dual Tone Multiple Frequency) or telephone keypress and recorded in government website automatically.

This interesting outbound IVR application is implemented by Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd.

This is another example of how IVR can used to monitor welfare schemes by governments.

Few days ago, I had posted about using IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System in mission critical operation in underground mining operation. Continuing int he same line, there is another interesting IVR application which is useful in our day to day life and can prove to be life saving at times! That is IVR based automatic pill reminder service.

In short, automatic Pill reminder service is essentially an outbound IVR which is capable of dialing out programmed phone number of the patient at programmed time automatically without any manual intervention. When the call is connected, it will play a recorded message and then wait for confirmation whether the patient has taken the medicine or not. When the patient dos not respond the call or confirm the medicine taken, IVR will raise an alarm either by sending an email or SMS to medical staff responsible for the patient’s hospital so that some manual intervention can be taken immediately depending on the severity of the timely medicine!

This kind of automatic pill reminder service can be hosted or on premise IVR system. In India, Niche Tech Services (P) Ltd offers both on premise as well as hosted IVR based automatic pill reminder service.

Few essentials in pill reminder services are :-

1. It should support different language for different patients

The IVR should be able to play messages in different languages so that save IVR system could be used to alert many patients.

2. It should be be able to record response from patient

The pill reminder service should be able to accept some response either DTMF ( Dual Tone Multi Frequency) press or automatic speech recognition. Automatic Speech recognition ( ASR ) may work well since it will just need YES or NO response from the patient.

3. It should provide alarms

The IVR should be capable of raising an alarm to concerned doctor or medical supervisor responsible for the patient immediately if the patient fails to respond to the pill reminding call or respond about the medicine taken in negative. Timely intervention by a medical supervisor may prove to be life saving exercise at times.

4. It should have MIS

The system should be able to provide patient wise, call wise MIS ( management information system) so that complete medical history for the patient could be organised. It should also store all responses by the patient.

Having IVR based pill reminder system offers many benefits. For example, now a days everybody keeps a mobile phone with him all the time and always attentive to any call. So, alert system using a telephonic call has more chances of being attended.

Getting response and storing them is useful information for he doctor for analysing about the patient responsiveness to the treatment.

Using phone is one of the cheapest and better option that having any web based reminder system or alarm system. An IVR can precisely play a message about the type of medicine the patient is required to take at that time. This will help the patient to concentrate on his regular works having to remember about his medicines and worry about it all the time.

So, if you have a hospital or medical service facility, it is time you put automatic IVR based pill reminder system in place to serve your patients better! Even call centers can offer this service to many large hospitals and health care industries.

Internet offers many services which are useful in our day to day life. There are many web portals which providing directory services which list traders, shops, local business houses, various service providers etc. along with with easy ‘search and find’ option.

Web Directory Service IVR

There are few challenges for maintaining a directory service portal with accurate information. For example :-

1. Many directory service web portals still list phone numbers which are no longer in service or disconnected for may business houses. These phone numbers need to be periodically checked and verified. Or before listing them, one needs to verify it. When outdated phone number is listed against any shop or service providers ina directory listing website, it loses confidence in web visitors.

2. Address verification is another tedious and manual process which takes a lot of resources of the web portal. By providing accurate address, a directory web portal increases reputation among web visitors and gain popularity.

3. Many directory services allow web visitors or local business establishments to list themselves on the web portal. The phone numbers, addresses provided by them needs to be verified before publishing them. It is tedious and time consuming process.

IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System can automate all the above verification process and can easily verify all the data.

How IVR can help directory services ?

1. IVR can make automatic outbound calls against any phone number listed against any address or business establishment. It can dial out the number and report back if the number is not reachable. If it is land-line number and does not ring, gets disconnected immediately or does not get busy tone after trying three times, it can safely assume that, the number does not work or exist and stop it getting published on the website.
When the phone number rings and picked up, then it can announce purpose of calling and then verify his address by asking him to press few keys!

This process can be completely automatic and can be done periodically to keep phone numbers updated and accurate.

2. In order to verify correct information or address, IVR can dial out the phone number, read out address using TTS ( Text To Speech) and then ask the called party to press a key to verify. IVR can also transfer the call to some human agent in case further assistance is required. With accurate address, the web portal can increase its credibility and respect by web visitors.

3. For user submitted data ( where web visitors are allowed to submit their shop, services to be listed in the web directory), IVR can be used quite effectively to validate phone numbers, verify address without manual intervention. While user submitted data can help a web directory portal grow, but these kind of data seem to be most inaccurate. With use of IVR, the accuracy of user submitted data can be improved.

Apart from IVR for verifying data, another important IVR application, Click To Call can be used to track leads generated by its listing, as well as allow added facility for web visitors to speak to these listings free of cost!

If you own a web directory service, yellow pages, it is time to augment your effort using IVR system!

The other day, I was discussing with Jarek of Ositron, my good friend from Poland, and he informed me about very interesting IVR application to be used in mining industry! Basically it is a simple outbound IVR application, but it can be very useful in automatic monitoring of miners working underground and alert.

IVR in Safety application

With fresh from the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days, this IVR application can at least raise an alarm in time!

How does it work ?
It is a simple outbound IVR applicaion which will dial every miner once in every 5 minutes. The miner does not have to do anything, but just pick the call once. IVR system will know miner is well and hearty. But if the miner does not answer the call from IVR, the IVR application would again call him n 2 minutes, then also if there is no reply from him, IVR would raise an alarm for human intervention immediately.

A complete system may work as follows :-

1. When ever a miner goes to work, he would punch attendance which IVR will record and start calling him periodically.

2. When a miner comes out, he will log his departure and IVR will no longer make the outbound calls to him.

3. When a miner is unable to respond in the first call, IVR will call him within 2 minutes and would repeat for 2/3 times. After that, IVR will raise an alarm.

4. When IVR raises an alarm, it can check with other miners to get information about the miner who is not responding.

This is a simple outbound IVR but it can be very interesting application of IVR system in real life, mission critical operation. Anything may happen while a miner is working alone under ground. But regular and periodic monitoring by IVR may help prevent any unwanted incident and avoid human life loss with timely intervention.

Apart from mining, there are deep well where people work under ground using radio communications. The same kind of IVR should be usable in such scenarios too.

With recent trappings of 33 miners under ground from 69 days in Chile should, safety of miners working underground would be more urgent and I hope IVR can contribute in automatic monitoring of miners.

What is call back feature ?

Call Back feature is when a person call a number and then disconnect and immediately that dialed number calls back the person. Now the person can enter another phone number and get connected to that phone number! This kind of phone number which calls back a person is also known as DID ( Direct Inbound Dialing) or Direct Dial-in.

Implementing Call Back Service using IVR

Call back feature is implemented using a smart IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System which performs three tasks :-

1. Detect caller ID and look up in a database if the caller id is a registered for call back service.

2. If the detected Caller ID is a registered user for call back service, then make an outbound call.

3. Once the Caller ID picks up the call, prompt for entering a phone number. The IVR then makes another out bound call to this entered phone number and bridge with the earlier call.

Recently, this kind of call back service is also available as web based service where a user just login to a website, enters his own registered number and then the other number with whom he wants to speak to. Call back service is used where direct dialing is costlier.

So, majorly call back feature is useful for lowering call cost or when a company does not want its subscribers for making support calls. Presently, most people use Toll Free number for this purpose. Toll free numbers are those numbers where caller does not pay, but the owner of the toll free number pays per minute charges.

But with falling outbound call rates as well as smart arrangement of outbound IVR arrangements, companies are now actively looking to use call back services instead of costlier toll free numbers.

A typical toll free number in India costs around Rs. 2.5/- per minute while an outbound call from a call center using outbound IVR and EPABX arrangement as I described in my earlier post about outbound Calling arrangement in India , per minute cost of making outbound call would be less than 45 paise per minute or completely free for small monthly subscription!

With this kind of cost advantage, many people are now receptive to the idea of using call back service instead of traditional toll free number. Apart from cost advantage, call back service offers few other advantages too :-

1. Since it is an outbound call with IVR behind it, it may call back at any time and record a message if there is no one to receive the call. In a toll free, either it will have to be received by some one or it will simply ring out without any record of it.

2. In a call center, iit is possible that Call Back will dial out the number while ensuring a customer care executive available to receive the call. It will increase customer satisfaction and can increase efficiency of customer care executives.

3. Many advanced feature could be implemented using the same IVR hardware.

So, if you are really looking to minimise your toll free numbers cost and maximise automation using IVR, most probably, it is time you look for call back service with smart Outbound IVR!

I recently spent some vacation time in Washington D.C. which naturally involved squeezing in as much of the Smithsonian as possible in a short period of time. While I was there, reading about the different exhibits, one thing I saw at quite a few locations really jumped out at me: cell phone audio tours.

Quite a few exhibits had signs or placards up with a phone number and “extension” that you could call from your cell phone to listen to more information about that particular display. These signs everywhere from inside the different Smithsonian buildings to the National Botanic Garden. With my nerdy side shining through, I couldn’t help but think, “What a wonderful application for an interactive voice response system!” Everyone these days carries a cell phone with them, and these call-in numbers give anyone who is interested the opportunity to hear more about the displays that interest them straight from the source, whether it is a recording made by the artist or the curator or gardener.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has a way of sounding very complicated, and that is largely because it is such a powerful and dynamic technology that the possibilities alone can be a bit daunting. It is a little bit easier to grasp if we break it down to some of the unique applications that IVR can be used for. In this case, the museum is in essence putting together an information line.
Visitors call the information line, input the number displayed for their current location, and the appropriate audio is played back to them. In other cases, it can be used as an answering attendant to direct incoming phone calls to different extensions, collecting data in an automated telephone survey, or a variety of other tasks.

So while part of me hates to admit that work followed me on my vacation in the form of IVM interactive voice response software, another part of me really got a kick out of seeing this great application for an IVR system at the museum. It’s something to keep in mind if you are looking for a solution to help you share information or your expertise without having to always be available in person.

What is Call – In – Sick ?
Call In Sick is some urgent absent notification by employees about their intended absence in office normally before start of office or at the beginning of it. Employees normally call to their superiors or leave a message with heir colleague.
This is common practice to “call in sick” to office at some point of time either due to genuine sickness or for some urgent personal reason. In India, any employees are granted few leaves in a year, known as CL ( Casual Leave).

Many large corporates with thousands of employees may get many ‘call-in-sick’ calls everyday. Receiving, recording all such calls and then providing information to respective superiors may become a tedious process for large corporates. IVR can be used as an effective tool to manage all “call-in-sick” calls. Presently, employees call their superiors or colleagues to inform about sickness and urgent requirement for unplanned leave for a day.

How IVR can be used ?

One dedicated number will be provided to employees for call-in-sick purposes. All employees will use this telephone number to report urgent leave of absence for the day.

1. As soon as employee calls to this number, IVR will ask to enter the employee number. IVR will then look up employee details as well as already availed casual leaves.

2. IVR will ask reasons for asking casual leave with most used reasons, like sudden sick, accident etc. For others, it will record a voice message.

3. Once the reason for asking casual leave is recorded, the notification of absence of the employee will be immediately notified to his/her colleagues as well as superiors.

4. IVR may even inform the caller if some urgent meeting was scheduled for the day and his presence in office is a must, or inform him his number of leaves taken for falling ill for the current month.

Some advantages of using IVR for managing Call In Sick :

1. Supervisors or seniors would instantly know if any of his juniors are absent as soon as they ope their mailbox and may even get SMS alert, instead of finding out physically. This will help him plan, depute in the absence of of the employee.

2. In any school, it becomes a night mare when one teacher call-in-sick, and no alternative arrangement is made quickly by school principal.

3. It allows keep track of absent employees daily basis.

4. Genuine call in sick employees can record their absence without having to call up the boss who might not be co-operative enough to understand and an IVR can surely save him from embarrassment of trying to convince his non-cooperative boss! IVR can even remind call-in-sick employees, how many times he/she had taken sick leave so far!

5. IVR can provide MIS report for departmental heads for call-in-sick by employees, day wise, month wise or employee wise for better HR resource planning as well as appraisals.

So, IVR could be used to record, manage all ‘call in sick’ employees without anyone’s involvement in the process. With futuristic feature like ‘Speaker recognition’, IVR might even be able to predict if the employee calling in sick is actually ill or not! This will be a real good feature departmental heads.

Recently, I tried to book air line ticket using IVR from one of the leading private air line operators in India. The ticket booking process was not on IVR, only the payment part using credit card was on IVR actually. The process went like this:

1. I called up the IVR number. It gave me options to choose from menus like booking, check ticket status etc.

2. I selected Ticket booking, it asked for domestic or international and I choose domestic.

3. The IVR transferred my call to an human agent. So I asked the human agent, how the booking would be done. She explained that, she would block the ticket for me after getting my details like name, departure city to arrival city etc., and the call would be transferred to IVR payment gateway where I would have to enter my credit card details. As soon as payment is processed successfully, the IVR will transfer the call to human agent again who would provide ticket number ( PNR) and would email the ticket.

So, the whole ticketing was not completely automated by IVR, but human assisted. I could think of one main reason why it is not possible to make the ticket booking process completely automated system. How to put a name on the ticket! Most probably, this problem might not be solved in near future until every person has one unique ID.

But, this problem of entering a name could be solved by sending one SMS ( Short Messaging Service ) to register to the airline before making call to book the ticket. IVR application can verify this registration details along with caller ID and use the name from there. This can work as good as ( even better and faster ) collecting these data by human agent.

Apart from this, there are other ticketing where entering name (or identity proof) is not as important as in air line ticketing, like cinema ticketing, bus ticketing, IVR could be fully automated. Also, with advent of ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition), entering name might be possible, but still it may not perform satisfactorily.

IVR ticket booking can offer few benefits:-

1. IVR is accessible on telephone from anywhere. The same may not be true for internet, availability of PC etc.

2. IVR could be much faster process of booking a ticket if the person is a registered frequent flier of the air lines or registered member with personal details. One would be able to book a flight by just entering the flight number and date of journey!

3. IVR may even use ‘already stored credit’ card details for faster processing. Credit details could be collected during initial registration process either through website or manually.

4. IVR will offer more security if registered member is mapped with his phone number.

Though, in the present circumstances, the human assisted ticket booking looks like best option, still benefits of faster ticket booking could be provided to its registered member of frequent flier programs. The same way, IVR could be used for booking tickets where members can register themselves using website and filling up their personal details and book tickets on the move!

It may take some time design a complete automated ticket booking system using IVR where personal details are required. I would like to learn if some one has developed completely automated ticket booking system using IVR!

The usage of IVR is growing in India. IVR has been used for long time in India like any other country in the world. These IVR systems were majorly used as train status information, flight status information and other few complaint lodging/booking system. And at that time ( before 1997), India had very low telecom density. After telecom boom in 1999, telecom density in India has grown to over 44% by 2010. Until recently, India was adding almost 10m telephone ( both land line and mobile) users per month.

Usage of IVR has also seen growth int the same period. Also, IVR systems are being used in many new areas increasingly. In my opinion, there are four major areas where IVR is being increasingly used in India :-

1. IVR as Value Added Service
2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center
3. IVR in payment gateways
4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.

1. IVR for value added service

After mobile boom in India, SMS based VAS services saw phenomenal growth. At the same time, voice portals have also entered into the area with premium charging per minute. CRBT service can also be termed as IVR system which has become major revenue earner for mobile companies in India.
Recently, IVR is also being used as voice blasting services for product and service promotions, election campaigning, or any telephonic remainder service. Even IVR based click to call service has also started in India. I think, this is one type of IVR which has huge potential for growth in India.

2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center

With India’s large English speaking population, BPO industry flourished after 2000 and many call centers have sprung up. With these call center, the use of outbound dialer or predictive dialer grew. Inbound IVR has been increasingly used in call center to screening the caller, providing mundane and regular information to the callers. Though call centers in India have not started very intelligent IVR yet which could be used for complete automated self service complaint management systems or any other self-help automated system.
Lately, people have been trying to integrate IVR with existing CRM software or bundle IVR with newer version of CRM software.

3. IVR in payment gateways

With major international and private banks opening shops in India, IVR has found usage in payment gateways as well as banks as Phone banking service.
IVR is also being used in payment gateways for credit card transaction using telephone. This kind of IVR needs to be PCI compliant and there have been many vendor which have developed PCI compliant IVR software. With low penetration of internet, but very high penetration of mobile phone and telephone, this type of IVR may grow healthily in recent time.

4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.
Indian Railways and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) has been oldest users of IVR in India. Indian Railways has installed many IVR systems ate individual busy stations for providing Train status information, Ticket Reservation status enquiry etc.
BSNL has been using IVR for fault and complaint booking. Apart from these two, many PSUs have been using Voice Mail systems in their PABXs.
Airlines have also been using inbound IVR for updating flight status information.

Apart from these, IVR in clinical trial has not really picked up here in India which is one of the most widely use area in other parts of the world. But there are many interesting IVR usage in India and we can be sure that some innovative IVR application will be developed by some company to exploit its huge number of telephone users!