Most probably, the debate on merits and demerits of using ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition) would continue for some time to come, but in case of India, there are three compelling reason avoid using ASR where simple, old, robust and universally understood ‘keypress’ can do. While ASR can surely speed up and increase interactivity of an IVR system, in Indian scenario, it can be a big nuisance, specially for IVR vendors providing IVR to be used nationwide.

Here are my reasons:-

1. Poor Recognition due to background noise

With due respect to all ASR engines, India is a loud country with lot of noises all around! So, with lot of background noise, it is not possible to recognise words or phrases with high degree of accuracy. Indian cities are noisy with lot of noise pollution all around. Even Indian houses are not well ventilated. Indian villages are crowed with various domestic animal who create lot of sounds.

Because of this background noises, good ASR engines also fail to perform properly and end up with poor accuracy. But users will never appreciate the ‘genuine’ technical problems behind this, but the blame will fall squarely on IVR developer or IVR Vendor.

2. Languages and Accent

India is home to 1652 languages. Out of these, 29 languages are spoken by more than more than 1 million people and another 122 are spoken by more than 10,000. It has officially recognised 22 languages. English is widely spoken and understood all around the country but India also has more than 250 million illiterate people.
So with this statistics, one can easily figure out the changes in accents for speaking even English numerals, forget about English words or Phrases!

This lack of common accent for speaking out any word or phrase prevent any ASR engine detecting them accurately. But, everyone who has dialed into an IVR system, already know how to press a key from the telephone instrument or the mobile. So, in order to wider use of IVR as well as accuracy, ASR should be avoided.

3. Poor Mobile Signal

Most of the recent telephone users in India are mobile phone users. Apart from big cities, large areas as well as large pockets of cities too, have poor network signal and keeps fluctuating rapidly. Due to which, two human may be able to somehow communicate, but in case of IVR, there chances that it would miss some voices, part of voice which are vital for recognising a word or phrase by ASR.

So, even the best ASR would fail to detect words accurately resulting in caller dissatisfaction, call abandonment which will defeat the very reason for using an IVR system.

While there would be remedies, tricks and techniques to address these problems, but these are top reasons if some one wants to avoid using ASR in India!

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.

IVR Hosting is growing world-wide and many people are increasingly opting for Hosted IVR solutions. Though hosted IVR Solution may not be able to replace On-Preimse IVR solutions in some cases, but here are top five reasons why one should opt for IVR hosting :-

IVR Hosting ay be your ideal IVR solution!

1. Future Proof

With increasing number of CTI vendors as well as available CTI boards, it has not only become difficult to choose a CTI board, but it has also created a new risk, that is obsolescence! Many people may remember buying good old D/4PCI without any fear or consideration of going obsolete, but not anymore!
With recent advancement in speech recognition technologies, as well as complex IVR systems which may require data exchange between servers located at many places, one can safely say that, today’s IVR technology is going to be obsolete a lot quicker than before.

In hosted IVR solution, this is never going to be a problem for user! One can expect, the hosted IVR service provider will always be updated with latest technologies, features available in IVR technology.

2. No maintenance and no support nightmare

IVR System consists of more than one components. For example, it has telecom components which connects you to the PSTN ( Public Switch Network). Then there is a computer Server and power as well as power back up. Apart from this, there is one CTI vendor as well as IVR Software vendor!

Most of the times, you do not find one single vendor providing you all above components. So, one needs to contact all these vendors for support. One may even encounter a problem like, CTI vendor blaming the Telecom connectivity for the IVR system malfunctioning, while the computer hardware guy blaming the IVR software.

In hosted IVR solution, you have only one problem, only one support, either your IVR is working or it is not. And contact only one support for this. It will save time and resources for any company.

3. Real-time monitoring of expenses and exit route

With IVR hosting service, one can actually measure ROI ( return on Investment) quickly and in real time. From the monthly payment to the Hosted IVR service provider, one can measure exact number of calls, call abandonment, successful calls and any saving in human intervention. But one may argue, these data are available on On-Premise solution too. Yes, but when you know use of IVR is not reducing burden of human resources, you have had already invested on the IVR systems as capital expenditure!

But with Hosted IVR solution, you have quick exit route or try out different type of call flow, different features. On premise IVR, one can not expect these benefits!

4. Focus your core business, no allocate resources for IVR a business tool for you

IVR system is a business automation system to automate customer care, reduce human intervention, increase accuracy of information as well as collecting measurable information about callers and customers. Maintaining or developing IVR system may not be your core competence. So, one should devote resources in their core competence rather than devoting resources in IVR upkeep.

Hosted IVR is the perfect solution which offers complete IVR solution without having to know anything about IVR yourself.

5. Quick upgrade and expansion

Hosted IVR offers facility to upgrade capacity of calls, or any other required feature quickly. One can also opt for using different technology for different kind of calls. For example, one may opt for VOIP for outbound calls while using TDM network for incoming calls by the customers. The best part is, one can change this kind for arrangement frequently as per requirement. With On-Premise IVR, one is stuck with the CTI board purchased as well as initial SRS ( System Requirement Specification) of IVR.
These kind of flexible features are available with IVR hosting and if one requires these facility, he might have invest a lot in different hardware alone!

So, it may be time for you to think about IVR hosting seriously!

Recently, I have started getting mails about asking open source IVR as well as its availability for free, download-able from internet! Most of the people who have asked me about “‘Open Source IVR” have heard about Asterisk. Before going into the details about Asterisk, being open source IVR, I would like to clarify few things about IVR ( Interactive Voice Response)  System.

IVR system consists of  four components, one can say. They are :-

1. CTI ( Computer Telephony) board
2. Call Flow development as per requirement
3. Voice prompts, TTS ( Text To Speech) Engine  and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Engine
4. Host PC or Server for #1 through #3 above.

1. CTI ( Computer Telephony) board

CTI board is a hardware and I m quite sure, nobody will make it ‘open source’ or free for anyone! The other alternative is SIP ( Session Initiated Protocol) on VoIP ( Voice Over Internet Protocol). But for connecting to PSTN ( Public Switched Network), TDM based CTI Board is a must and there is no alternative, as of now!

All CTI boards come with their own set of API ( Application Programming Interfaces) to control telecom protocols and call handling. Dialogic, the biggest CTI company provides many APIs as well as sample codes in three major operating systems, Windows, Linux and MAC OS. Likewise, other CTI vendors too provide their proprietary C++ API for at least two OS.

2. Call Flow development as per requirement

There are many online as well as offline call flow development tools. Some Call Flow development tools are completely pictorial visual tool where one can drag and drop various call flow like components to make a call flow. Some others use simple ‘English’ like/natural language like scripts to define call flow. Incidentally, all these tools are free to use for developing the call flow, but to execute these call flow, one has to pay per port licenses.

VXML is standard call flow development language adopted by W3 which uses HTML like simple syntax. Presently this requires a third party interpreter which again requires per port licenses.

3. Voice prompts, TTS ( Text To Speech) Engine and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Engine

Voice prompts are normally recorded in a studio by professional artists. One can also record voice prompts using computer/laptop and MIC for development purpose. There are many open source, freely available TTS. Even MS SAPI is freely available. eSpeak, a popular TTS which has support for many languages from all around the world, is an open source TTS which works well both in Windows and Linux.
Likewise there are many open source ASR that works well after refinements.

Now, major challenge is to integrate all these components and build a reliable IVR system. Now a days, IVR is no longer simple call flow of yes and no by the caller, but complex system with data retrieving from multiple sources. It performs complex task as well compute input data by caller, make a decision and respond to caller with appropriate answer.

Most of the time, making an informed choice of IVR which is most suitable for a particular IVR application is quite difficult.

Now finally, Asterisk is a truly open source telephony system with IVR facility. It is Linux based and supports many CTI hardware and many developers contributing to it. It is a completely DIY ( Do It Yourself) IVR platform. It may not be easy to develop an IVR system quickly for a beginner using Asterisk from a scratch. At the end, it may be as difficult as building IVR using native API available with CTI board itself.

Many high density and widely deployed CTI hardware are not supported by Asterisk. This is one disadvantage which Asterisk will take some time to overcome. And at the end, while some one tries to customise Asterisk, he might end up with his own proprietary piece of codes, specific to some CTI hardware only!

Advantage of using API of CTI board is the freedom of choice of operating system as well as programming language. Programming languages like C++ offer power of ‘real programming’ language to complete complex tasks as well as integrate with any third party software.

So, one may not have much choice as Open Source IVR!

Recently, I have been able to test VBVoice 5.6.2 using Dialogic D300 springware board as well as HMP 3.0. Mr. Sean from Pronexus has been kind enough to configure and give us a presentation to quick start developing voice application.

VBVoice IVR Toolkit : Power to Programmer

VBVoice is one of the most powerful IVR toolkit which is available in Microsoft .NET Integrated Development Environment as simple controls/components to develop powerful CTI application/IVR Software with any kind of computational need in the back ground. Any .NET developers using either VB .NET, C# can use its “CTI Building Blocks” to start building any kind of IVR system with complex call flow. This is one tool which has no limitation on computational capabilities except the limitation of .NET environment itself or programming skill! One need not worry about implementing smart features of any IVR Software DTMF, ASR, TTS, VBVoice has all features built into it.

We prepared two different machines with Windows XP OS, one each for Dialogic D300 springware board and HMP 3.0. And we installed required Dialogic System Release 6.0 for D300 board and HMP 3.0 as well as VBVoice 5.6.2. Mr. Sean from Pronexus had remotely activated license for VBVoice.

First we configured Dialogic HMP Software an activated four channel licenses for VoIP calls. Once it was done, we opened Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 C# project and loaded some VBVoice sample application. And it worked in single click! We used X-Lite installed in different computer on the same LAN to make voice calls.

After that we wanted to check with TDM board (Dialogic D300) in other machine. Since we had already activated VBVoice license on other machine with HMP, we needed to access the same license from this machine with TDM board through LAN. It was a simple configuration.

Once the license was done, we created a simple Inbound IVR to select Language on DTMF keypress using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. It was done in less than five minutes and we could make calls to our PRI number and select languages.

VBVoice has both GUI tool for editing and configuring its various options like License settings, Telephony Interface type etc. For advanced users, one can simply edit the configuration text file quickly. Depending on the active licenses, all the controls, components gets loaded in .NET IDE, ready to be used! Any call flow can be created visually by dragging these controls and dropping on the design form. After that, one may simply configure the required DTMF keys, point to next menu options etc. All finer details like number of DTMF digits to accept, total delay time etc. are available for configuration on each control/component. After creating and setting the properties of these components, component’s events allow using code ( C#, VB .NET) to customize further the behaviour of the components at runtime depending on user input or any other external event.

VBVoice : Powerful IVR Toolkit

One of the interesting feature of VBVoice is Worker thread. It allows programmer to create separate thread for doing some computation separately without holding the main IVR Call Flow thread. For example, the Worker thread may try to access remote database server, access API, do some computation, billing etc. before giving feedback to main IVR call Flow thread.

To learn about more features one may visit Pronexus : VBVoice – IVR ToolKit.

We have been able to develop a few IVR applications in response to inquiries from our clients to give them POC (proof of Concept) about our IVR capabilities using VBVoice in very short period of time and could impress them suitably.

It also provides controls to dynamically create list of voice files from pre-recorded WAV files without using TTS which is played for menu selection. This kind of intelligent dynamic menu has been forte of C++ developers till now.

Like any other great products, VBVoice has one drawback, presently it supports only Dialogic boards. It does not support Sangoma or other cheaper cousins of Dialogic.

According to Pronexus representative, roadmap of VBVoice includes support for H.263 video play using Dialogic HMP and running VoIP in virtual machines. It will be available for testing very soon. So, we may be able to develop IVVR (Interactive Video and Voice Response System) pretty soon using VBVoice! In the age of 3G and IPad, VBVoice is going to provide exciting time for IVR developers!

In order to get evaluation version of VBVoice : one may contact me or Pronexus Directly : Get VBVoice or Write to Mr. Steve Brown, V.P. Sales at: steve.brown@pronexus.com.

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!

There are few parameters or features of IVR which are important and are common to almost any type of IVR application. These parameters play very important role in making the voice application more user friendly. These parameters are used at many stages in IVR software or in any call flow. I hope, knowing these would help people who are looking to develop an IVR or looking to purchase IVR software.

These are very small parameters, but they may play crucial role in reducing call abandon rate in IVR. Some of them are :-

1. Allowing or not allowing caller to press a key while IVR plays the menu options

IVR may be configured to accept or to reject any key press while caller is listening the menu options. Allowing to press key during playing of menu allows caller to ‘cut through‘ the IVR menus and reach his desired IVR stage or menu quickly. But it may also increase chances of wrong key press, specially when some menus options are changed. Many regular caller may not like to hear known menus again and again.

2. Duration to allow a caller to press any key or voice command

Waiting time for callers key press or voice command may become crucial. During wait period, IVR does not play anything and become silent, so if this wait period is too long, caller may think the IVR is not responding, so disconnect the call.

3. How many times to play a same menu and number of attempts to choose correct menu options

Naturally, people make mistakes while pressing key or may make mistakes intentionally. So, it is important to decide the number of attempts one may try for each and every menu options. This kind of parameter may be required even while accepting some valid input from caller, for example mobile number, customer ID, complaint ticket etc. If this is not defined, then some caller may occupy some channel of the IVR unnecessarily.

4. Confirming menu menu selection of digit (s) pressed or voice command spoken

It is an important decision to make. Should IVR confirm every menu choice made by caller or not! Even in any software, when some one tries to do some important task, it pops up an confirmation window, similarly, IVR also ask confirmation for menu choice! But it may also irritate IVR caller. When using ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition), confirming every option may become a necessity rather than a choice.

5. Inter-digit pause while expecting more than one DTMF keys as input from caller.

While caller enters multiple digits as input to the IVR, for example, credit card number, phone number, ID number, the duration of pause in between two consecutive DTMF digits or key press is important. Very long inter digit pause may result caller disconnect.

6. Using # ( hash) or star (*) keys to terminate

Deciding to use # or * keys to end entry of multiple digit is a good option. But these keys may also confuse some people who do not know about # or * keys as many of them do not use these keys. In India, many land line phones do not have # key. But with penetration of mobile phones, one may expect people to know about these keys.

These parameters are quite common and many developers use some configuration files or provide user friendly forms to configure.

It may not be easy to define a successful IVR ( Interactive voice response) System. In single line, one IVR system could be termed successful when it has lowest abandon rate by both genuine new and old callers. When an IVR system is designed to perform some specific task for a caller, if the caller completes those tasks using the IVR easily at the shortest time possible, then the IVR will have very less abandonment rate and the IVR could be termed successful IVR.

For example, if one IVR system retrieves outstanding bill for telephone number, the caller should be able to hear his/her outstanding bill at the shortest possible time, without failure with having to choose minimum options, either using DTMF/Key-press or voice command. If the caller disconnects the call before he hears his outstanding bill amount, then it would be ‘abandon of IVR call’. But if the caller listens to his outstanding bill amount, and then disconnects the call, it is ‘successful IVR call’.

So, apart from technical challenge (developing the IVR software, integrating with PBX/ IP-PBX etc.), the major consideration for IVR or any voice application for matter, remains making the most user-friendly IVR call flow or Voice User Interface (VUI) design. So, success of IVR will depend on majorly on the VUI design! The callers who are the users of IVR system, will care little about the technology involved for developing the IVR system and will care about only the information they want. If they do not find it easy to get the information they want, IVR system is useless for them. ( One may check #ivr #ivrs trending in twitter.com to find how people hate about IVRS, everywhere in the world!)

There are two types of caller, new caller and old or regular callers to any IVR system. One of the most common complaint by regular caller is the change of menu options! In any customer care IVR system, normally, regular caller outnumber new callers, if call flow is changed, suddenly, there is no longer any old or regular caller for the IVR as everybody becomes new caller. Everybody will have to listen to all menu options as long as the prompts play! This increases not only abandon calls, but also increase time spent on the IVR system by callers! Normally, IVR system should aim to complete its ‘task’ at the shortest time, to server more caller with fixed number of lines.

Recently, I have experienced increase in demand from IVR users who wanted to have options to change the call flow using some visual tools, I always wanted to discourage them! Though visual tool is an excellent way for developing IVR application, it should not be used to keep changing the call flow quickly or just for the sake of changing it and just because one has a easy visual tool to change it! Else the very purpose of installing IVR system would be defeated and one will own a failed IVR system with high call abandon rate!

Designing IVR call flow is very important for success of an IVR deployment, and sticking to the same call flow is also equally important. Call flow should be changed only when it is a must, other wise IVR call flow should not be changed. One is sure to see spike in abandoned calls when call flow is changed.

Everyone involved in IVR industry may have heard reasons why normal users, customers ‘hate’ using IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) Systems. There are many reasons why people hate using IVR and how IVR could be made more user-friendly with good VUI design practices. I thought I would update top five things about IVR that people hate about.

1. Duplicate Information

When customer calls to any call center looking for support, query etc., they are normally answered by IVR and customer needs to provide their information like phone number, account ID etc. ( depending on services they subscribe to). After all these ‘question-answer-round’ and agonising repeat-confirmation round by IVR, customer is finally connected to a CSR or human agent. But immediately, customer is asked the same questions which he had already answered to IVR!

Simple POP-UP screen at CSR dsktop is the solution and many call center do not use them and the customer ire falls on IVR!

2. Being on-hold for long time before one may speak to human agent

After customer’s call is connected and then when she chooses to speak to human/live agent, IVR takes long time to actually transfer the call to live agent as live agents are busy. While everybody agrees that human resources are costly, but so are the time of customers/callers! This long time required for successful call transfer to human agents make customer hate IVR.

Smart predictive dialer is one solution to this.

3. Irritating music on hold/advertisement

As if making wait to speak an human agent is not enough to antagonize the caller, many people use IVR to play irritating music or advertisements while call hold! Imagine, one customer wants to complaint about a service and he gets to listen to advertisements about the same service while waiting to lodge her complaint against the very service!

It is not possible to play music which would be liked by everyone. Simple all waiting tone or announcing of time remaining till CSR would be free to attend the call should be good enough information during call wait.

4. Having to repeat YES/NO in ASR and DTMF pressing

Many ASR ( automatic speech recognition) repeats the answer by the caller and asks to confirm by speaking YES or NO. While this may be a required step for validating user input for IVR developer, but it becomes irritating for a caller having to confirm every answer or repeating the same. It is not easy to press telephone keys using a mobile phone, so many people simply hate IVR for making them press DTMF keys!

Looks like IVR will not be able to come out of this!

5. Long Menu

Some IVR of call centers really provide long menus or long options to choose from! If there are 9 options in an IVR and if IVR plays them as soon as caller is connected, most probably, caller would disconnect his call before he hears the 3rd option! Many people hate IVR for making them hear options which are not required by them!

We can hope, with smart IVR systems and good VUI design practice, this hatred can be reduced.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system can do many things and one of the most common task it performs is “Call Transfer”. Both inbound and outbound IVR may transfer the active call to some other telephone number or human agent once the IVR user chooses.

Though in a call center environment, human agent may get information about the caller in a POP UP window in its desktop PC, but when call is transferred to any telephone number, this kind of POP UP window with caller information may not be available! But, IVR may surely do a “Value Added Call Transfer” by announcing caller details in voice! It may even offer the transferee the option reject or divert to voice mail, transfer to another telephone number! In PBX terminology, it is called Call Whisper or Call Screening and when IVR implements it, we may surely call it “Value Added Call Transfer”.

How to Implement Value Added Call Transfer :

Implementing value added call transfer with IVR is quite, may be simple extension of any existing call transfer. It can be implemented using both analog and digital CTI card. While implementing value added call transfer, “bridged call transfer” would be employed using two channels.

in Analog CTI :
1. Put active call “ON HOLD” by implementing flash key ( ON HOOK for certain duration, 200ms or so, depending of PBX used).

2. Dial out the transferee number. Play the previous incoming call details as soon as call is picked. Wait for DTMF key from the transferee if required.

3. ON HOOK the call. The previous incoming call which was ON HOLD would be connected now. This feature may be PBX dependent.

in Digital CTI Card:

1. Play call waiting message or music for the incoming call, say on CH1.

2. Use CH2 to make outgoing call to the transferee and when the call is picked, play call details which is active on CH1. CH1 may play message about the status of CH2 call.

3. When transferee on CH2 chooses to pick the incoming call, bridge CH1 with CH2.

4. When transferee chooses Voice Mail, CH1 will stop call waiting message, asks caller to record his voice mail as the transferee had chosen to get message in voice mail, and disconnect CH2.

5. When transferee chooses to transfer to anther call, disconnect CH2, use it to dial the new transferee number and repeat #2 through #5.

This is not PBX dependent as it uses two separate channels.

Benefits

Call whisper has many benefits. It offers the called party knowing who is calling, not only his caller ID, but other useful information like if he is an existing customer, new customer, name, services used by him. All these information, prior to answering his call not only increases efficiency of customer service, but also reduce cost for the organisation.

Value Added Call Transfer may allow intelligent routing of calls on “informed decision” as transferee may transfer the call again after knowing the caller details besides caller id.

Advantages of implementing using IVR

While some PBX systems offer Call Whispering facility, but implementing it with IVR software has many advantages. IVR software can compute, present more information about the caller.

Changing voice prompts, use of dynamic information using TTS, ASR are possible with IVR software.

So, value added call transfer in IVR system may increase better and faster customer service. Click to Call service combined with value added call transfer would be a ‘killer application’ which would surely benefit website owners to convert their website visitor to customer!