Like many emerging services and technologies, development of IVR services too have many competing methods to develop IVR software. While Googling, interacting with various IVR companies, professionals I have found out some different types of IVR development tools or ‘school of thought’ as they call!

IVR Development Tools

Here are few I have thought of :-

1. Old School Of thought – Using built in API in C++ provided by the CTI manufacturers.

This type of IVR developers are decreasing and might become extinct in future! Most probably, Dialogic, Synway and Donjin may provide some lifeline to this kind of IVR developers as they are few CTI manufacturers with well documented API in C++. Old IVR programmers like me still prefer API and C++ as it gives power!

2. Web Style development – VXML, CCXML, VoicePHP

This kind of IVR developers treat IVR software as website or portal ( now we know why they call voice portal) and want to use simple tags for interacting with caller. This is intended to be open standard which will use a VXML Browser ( just like web browsers). VXMl browsers are available on Asterisk as open source also commercially available from Voxeo, I6net, Phonologies from India. Few CTI manufacturer like Digium, Sangoma etc. support this kind of IVR development tools.

3. Extension of Traditional Development tools like Microsoft .NET – VBVoice, Velocity

This kind of IVR tools reside in traditional powerful development environment Microsoft .NET technologies. They are very powerful and does not need any learning curve as conventional C# or VB is used for coding while using the Telephonic or CTI interfaces as component just like any button in the form. This kind of IVR development is gaining momentum now for the obvious reasons.

4. Complete New Tool with simple drag and Drop visual tools – Envox, Invox, Osidail, XtendIVR, OmniVox3D

This kind of tools comes as a complete solution which has its own GUI tool to drag and drop for making IVR call flow, test them offline, compile them and even port to VXML code to host in another hosting platform! With recent advancement in internet, this kind of tools are completely online and developers can just create an account and then start developing their IVR software! I think, the number of this kind of tools are highest at present.

So, these are four majorly available IVR development tools and every tool has merits and demerits. Most probably, a choice of IVR development tool would mostly depend on type of IVR software.

The one similarity in all above available tools are, they are licensed per channel basis. Developers has to pay per channel for their production IVR software for using the development tool or VXML browser.

CCXML (Call Control eXtensible Markup Language) is telephone call flow language in line with VoiceXML which provides telephony control to the voice application written in VoiceXML.

CCXML is completely separate from VoiceXML and work independently from VoiceXML, though they can work together.

CCXML can be thought as an interface between telephony API and voice user interface ( VUI ) written is easy to write and understand markup languages like VoiceXML. Telephony API which comes with CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration) boards and are normally available in C, C++ or other low level languages. So, in order to make development of both call control and voice application easier, CCXML is being standardized which will be more understandable as well as easier to learn.

CCXML provides required various voice call controlling facility like call bridging, call conference, call transfer, handling and monitoring simultaneous calls which are required to develop highly intelligent voice application to cater to real world problems. Presently, only customised voice applications developed specifically for one type of CTI hardware using native API were able to control both telephony calls as well as user call flow.

Using CCXML would provide developers to develop voice application independent of CTI hardware. Using CCXML as well as VoiceXML could provide rapid prototyping and development.
(For complete CCXML specification one may visit : http://www.w3.org/TR/ccxml/)

CCXML seems to be the future of telephony API. With easy availability of manpower who could quickly learn XML than learning C++, CCXML seems to be at right direction for making voice application development easier.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system itself is new in India even after decade of high telecom growth and penetration. And hosted IVR was almost unknown in India till recently. But now, few companies have come up with hosted IVR solutions to cater to few specific IVR applications.

Till now, IVR systems were thought to be standalone, on premise CTI systems for answering customer calls and transfer calls to some department, record a complaint, announce train/flight status and schedule. But with increasing telecom density, both users and telecom providers have been pushing IVR companies to provide many utility services using telephone or mobiles. For example, making payment using IVR system, listening to music on voice portal etc.

Indian IVR market seems to be now rapidly waking up to hosted IVR concept. Till few years back, not many people bothered much about VXML, CCXML. But now a days even normal IVR users are aware about these ‘jargon’. Also many US-based companies who have been using IVR for many customer service related applications, CRM applications on a hosted platform, have recently been actively looking for hosted IVR service providers in India.

There are few IVR services which are available or being implemented in India are :-

1. Voice Blast or Bulk Voice Message

After success of SMS marketing, voice SMS or bulk voice messaging was a natural graduation. In voice Message service, hosted IVR calls up telephone numbers and play a recorded message. This was widely used during election campaigns. There are few IVR companies which provide this service.

Automated dialer is another variant of outbound IVR application which is available in India as hosted IVR service.

2. Click To Call Service

Click To Call service has been in Indian market as hosted IVR service for few years now. It is widely used in trading, directory websites. Recently, travel portals, job portals and real estate websites have woken up to the usefulness of click to call service.

3. Complaint Management System

This is another application which is being used by some companies as Hosted IVR service. With reducing bandwidth cost, and increasing internet penetration, IVR based complaint management system has potential to become preferred complaint management for smaller organisations.

4. IVR Survey

There has been few instances where IVR based survey had been used in India. It is still in nascent stage, but this is one potential area. IVR survey offer many benefits over other traditional form of surveys like mailer, email, face to face, SMS etc.

So, Indian market is also moving towards hosted IVR services slowly. Though biggest IVR users in India, government sectors like Indian railways, BSNL etc. may still be using on-premise IVR systems, but smaller private sector industries like private telecom service providers, ISPs, payment gateway providers, hospitality industry may opt for hosted IVR service quickly.

Few of the hosted IVR service providers are, Niche Tech Services Private Ltd., Simmortel Voice, Phonon, etc.

Without doubt, interactive voice response (IVR) has become the ubiquitous technology in telecommunications applications. IVR solutions have a myriad of uses that are mostly taken for granted, however, the essence of an IVR system is its ability to offer ‘self-service’ for the user, thus it can help to reduce cost and improve the customer experience.

Since introducing the world’s first ‘all-in-one’ voice board in 1998, Aculab has been setting the standard of enabling technology components – e.g., CTI cards – for IVR applications. Whatever your needs for advanced IVR functionality, Aculab has the media processing technology and APIs – voice, fax, call progress, etc. – to drive your success.

Beneficially, Aculab is able to offer a choice; from its range of IP-centric, DSP-based Prosody X boards to its host-based (SoftDSP or HMP) option, Prosody S. And you can use Prosody X for converged or mixed IP/TDM environments, where you still need E1 or T1 PSTN connectivity.

Additionally, Aculab\’s VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter set offers a powerful and scalable design option for platform vendors and service providers alike. It is the fastest, most cost-effective, high performance solution available today, which is an effective combination in any language.

IVR system features and capacities vary depending on the market segments they target. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may look to enhance their IP-PBX with an IVR-based auto-attendant using Prosody S, while larger companies will require a Prosody X board-based solution for a hybrid contact centre or voice portal, perhaps also using automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS). Carriers and service providers need IVR to provide a wide range of subscriber messaging and large scale, hosted or VAS and mobile VAS service offerings. And, undoubtedly, TEMs (of all descriptions; Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.) and platform vendors supplying these user communities will also benefit from Aculab’s board and software options.

Check out Aculab at http://www.aculab.com/solutions/IVR-solutions.asp