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!

Complaint Management is one of the basic business process or task for any company which provides any services or sells any product to end users. It is almost impossible to run business or any utility service without getting some complaints by its users. On a lighter note, even a perfect product like human makes few ‘complaints’ to God about his problems.

While many big corporates or government agencies have dedicated department for handling customer inquiries, service requests, updates using either call center or contact center, smaller organisations can not afford to have dedicated call center. Also, having a call center may not be a feasible proposition where there is not huge number of complaints or inquiries or service requests.

While it may be easy to start a web based complaint management system where people may visit the website and log their complaints. But it may not be always possible for all type of customer to have internet connection and a PC. Above all, it may happen that internet connection itself is not working and an user needs to complaint to ISP ( Internet Service Provider). Complaint management is fairly established process where few basic ‘processes’ are done :-

1. User lodges a complaint and gets confirmation of the lodged complaint in form of some unique complaint ticket, complaint id etc.

2. User can check status of his complaints using the complaint ticket id.

3. User gets notified when the complaint is rectified.

4. At the back end, the service department of the organisation must be notified of the new complaint immediately for information as well as rectification measure.

5. It should also have editing capability thereby where an authorized service engineer can check pending complaints and then update its status to rectified or closed.

So, complaint system is fairly systematic process which can be automated and IVR ( interactive voice response) System can be used effectively for handling all the steps above. IVR can handle both incoming complaint lodging part as well as notifying user on rectification using outbound IVR flow.

Hosted IVR is can be used for complaint management system quickly and with minimum initial investment. All hosted IVR service providers offer customised IVR call flow as per complaint management IVR requirement.

Few of the benefits of having IVR based Complaint Management system in hosted environments are :-

1. By using hosted IVR service, one can minimise initial investment as well as go live pretty quickly.

2. One can use it on pilot basis how clients are using it as well as testing its usefulness in improving turn around time for attending complaint and rectification.

3. Hosted IVR provides facility like handling large call spikes in case of some failure and when organization expects large complaint calls.

4. Normally, hosted IVR service providers are skilled IVR professionals, so one can be assured of high IVR up-time as well as any future up-gradation or customisation requirement with latest technologies.

5. Hosted IVR complaint management system has built in web-based access for viewing, modifying customer complaints. It makes easier for any authorised person to access the complaint management system anywhere, from home or office or even while traveling.

6. Since it maintains all call records both incoming and outbound, it can also serve as an authentic ‘record of activity’ both by complainant as well as service engineer who had attended the complaint.

So, there are many benefits of using hosted IVR management system. One useful enhancement could be use of SMS in case the complainant has a mobile number for any notification service along with IVR voice call.

Recently, there has been news about growth of outbound IVR systems everywhere in the world. I have also experienced people preferring outbound IVR over inbound IVR. Outbound IVR systems are being preferred in those kind of application where some customer authentication or verification like credit card authorisaton, phone banking, voice alerts are required or in IVR applications like appeal for voting in election campaign apart from traditional usage of outbound IVR as predictive auto dialer in call center or contact center.

Difference between Inbound IVR and Outbound IVR systems

Technically speaking, there is not difference between inbound IVR systems and outbound IVR systems. Though in outbound system, few extra tasks by IVR software needs to perform like Call Progress Analysis (CPA). Apart form that, there is minor difference in call flow only. There is no hardware difference.

But there is a huge difference between inbound IVRS and outbound IVRS commercially. The major difference is, apart from IVR systems on toll free numbers, caller has to pay for calling to IVR number for per minute of usage as per tariff plan subscribed by the caller from a Telecom operator. But in outbound IVR, the called party or the user of the IVR system is not charged!

In inbound IVR, user dial in to the IVR number while in outbound IVR, the IVR calls out to the user. Once call is connected, the IVR operation remains the same.

In real world, outbound IVR faces many problems like detecting reason for connection of the call. Because call may be connected due to called party picking up the phone, called party transferring the call to its voice mailbox, answering machine etc. While these may cause problems, but with CTI boards offering advanced features for call progress analysis, outbound IVR software can detect these different types of connections though not with 100% accuracy all the time.

Why Outbound IVR is growing ?

1. IVR being increasing used as utility services
Outbound IVR is majorly growing as IVR is becoming increasingly a public utility service. If any public utility services to be successful, it should always be offered “free” to the actual users! Recently, people are increasingly using IVR for various public utility services like flight status alert, news alerts, remainder services etc.

2. Security reasons
In a any verification, it is always more secure if the call is originated from the verification agencies. I hope some fraud can be eliminated if the call is originated from verification agency. Verification calls or credit card authentication calls can be scheduled after some time consuming manual or automated checks about the credentials before asking an user for authentication.

3. Growth of Service Industry
Service industry has been growing anywhere in the world and more in India. It has increased in many call centers, tele-marketers which has increased requirement of outbound IVR systems. Many call centers use outbound IVR as predictive dialer, automated payment remainders, payment acknowledgment.

4. Innovation in IVR Systems
With advent of Hosted IVR solutions, the cost and implementation time of IVR systems has gone down and many smaller companies have started availing IVR services for various purpose. With falling telephone charge per minute, it has become more affordable by many smaller companies for whom outbound IVR was not affordable earlier.

I think, in days to come, outbound IVR will continue to grow.

I had posted a report few weeks back about IVR market growing to $2.7 billion by 2011 provided by DMG Consulting LLC, and today I had come across another press release while Googling, which says IVR market will grow to $514million from present estimate of $431million this year, as per T3i Group LLC, which “provides market research, data, analysis, and consulting and advisory services to the telecommunications industry.”

Few Key findings of the report says :
1. 95% of IVR shipped would be supporting VXML from recent less than 75%.
2. Top three IVR systems are
a. Inbound Call handling for contact centers
b. Inbound IVR self service transactions
c. Outbound IVR for alerts like appointment confirmations, payment collection remainder.
3. Inbound IVR will see decrease by 10% by 2013.
4. Outbound IVR will grow by 12% yearly.
5. Analog CTI boards are decreasing and DTMF based menu in IVR application are also on the decline. Speech enabled menu is growing and will be have 2:1 advantage over DTMF.

Complete Press release, Please visit : http://telecomweb.com/aboutus/pressreleases/262963.html

About T3i Group LLC

T3i Group LLC provides market research, data, analysis, and consulting and advisory services to the telecommunications industry. It has clients in 46 countries and conducts its business through four operating units: InfoTrack publishes reports that analyze shipment, revenue, market share and other pertinent data of importance to telecommunications equipment manufacturers; TelecomTactics maintains a database of the features and functionality of major telephony systems; Tarifica maintains a database of pricing-related information covering 400 telecommunications carriers operating in 130 countries; and TelecomWeb (www.t3igroup.com) serves as T3i Group’s primary delivery mechanism for distributing its reports, analyses and data to subscribers.

T3i Group LLC is headquartered in Parsippany, N.J., with additional offices in New York City; London, England; and Cherry Hill, N.J.

EGAIN, IVR System, IVRS Company

I came across an interesting IVRS ( Interactive Voice Response System ) application on net while browsing Google search results. eGain, the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, headquartered in California, USA, has recently added “Intelligent Voice Self-Service Solution to Its Multichannel Customer Interaction Hub Suite”!

That must be a smart IVRS application! As per their press release, their solution enhances user experience in the IVR “integrating it with other communication channels“. By applying web self-service best practices such as seamless escalation, unified cross-channel content, and CBR-guided interactions to IVR, it redefines phone self-service and increases customer adoption of the channel, as they claim.

eGain has patented CBR System ( Case Based Reasoning) which captures agents expertise of a contact center and with help of this, the IVR Software can prompt customers with intelligent questions based on caller replies and finally provide the correct information to the caller.

With eGain IVR, businesses are able to:
a. Allow IVR users to access the same information and complete the same transactions that they would be able to accomplish through other channels.
b. Offer context-aware escalation to multiple channels, including live agent channels such as phone and chat, and asynchronous agent channels such as email.

About eGain:
eGain (OTC BB: EGAN.OB) is the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software for on-site or on-demand deployment. For over a decade, hundreds of the world’s largest companies have relied on eGain to transform their traditional call centers, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs (CIHs). Based on the Power of One™, the concept of one unified platform for multichannel customer interaction and knowledge management, eGain solutions improve customer experience, enable self-service adoption, optimize service process end to end, increase sales, and enhance contact center performance.

Complete details of the press release, click here.

The recession has pushed up sales for IVR Software! Many companies have been adopting both hosted/managed IVR solutions, as per latest DMG Consulting LLC, the leading provider of contact center and real-time analytics research, market analysis, business strategy, operations, and technology consulting services which has published a recent report on IVR market trends.

According to the report, “the IVR market is now attracting a lot of attention and investment dollars. Sales of IVRs are growing rapidly based on the strength of new applications, rapid deployments and product innovation from a range of highly competitive hosted/managed service providers.”

“Self-service IVR solutions are important for enterprises in good times and become critical when budgets are tight, because they are highly effective in automating interactions that do not require the cognitive capabilities of live agents,” says Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting. “Many of the hosted/managed service IVR providers have come to market with inbound and outbound offerings that are highly responsive to the economic and technical challenges of their customers and this is speeding up the pace of adoption.”

Here is the complete news :

WEST ORANGE, NJ–(MARKET WIRE)–Jun 9, 2009 — DMG Consulting LLC, the leading provider of contact center and real-time analytics research, market analysis, business strategy, operations, and technology consulting services, has published its inaugural Hosted/Managed Service IVR Market Report. This is the most comprehensive, in-depth and timely guide to this high-value and fast-growing sector. Source and Complete Story.

About DMG Consulting LLC

DMG Consulting LLC is an advisory and consulting firm specializing in contact centers and analytics. We are a strategic advisor to contact centers and vendors, and the financial community. Our mission is to help our clients build world-class contact centers by leveraging technology, process and people. We help managers optimize the performance of their contact centers by increasing operational efficiency, providing an outstanding customer experience, enhancing loyalty and increasing sales and profits. And, we assist vendors in developing products and services that deliver differentiated innovation and benefits that suit the current and future needs of end users.

DMG Consulting is the leading provider of contact center and analytics industry research. Our reports cover many sectors, including: Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure, Interactive Voice Response Systems, Contact Center Analytics, Quality Management/Liability Recording, Speech Analytics, Performance Management, Surveying, Workforce Management, and Contact Center Outsourcing.

This is indeed a good news for both CTI vendor as well as IVRS Companies, IVR Consultants.

News about IVR Industry :-

PHOENIX – March 5, 2009 – Syntellect, Inc., a leading provider of contact center management solutions, announced today the release of Syntellect Communications Portal Version 7.2. The Communications Portal is the first of the combined technology efforts resulting from the acquisition of Envox Worldwide in October of last year. A descendant of the award-winning, open, standards-based VoiceXML gateway, Envox Communications Development Platform 7.1, the Communications Portal represents the future of Syntellect’s self-service, IP communications platform offerings.

“The combination of the Syntellect and Envox platforms along with the accompanied development tools expedited our corporate initiative to offer flexible solutions to our customers that are more scalable and provide more robust support for emerging technologies and industry standards,” says J.R. Sloan, vice president of product management and marketing for Syntellect. “We specifically branded this release with the name Communications Portal to more accurately reflect our support for IP communications solutions, including IP telephony, video messaging, SMS and e-mail, as well as traditional voice communications, on a single, cost-effective platform.”

Source : Syntellect Press Release. Click Here to read the on Syntellect Website or

This release contains the following new features:

* Additional Speech Technologies Vendor Support
* Efficiency Enhancements for MRCP V2
* New Features for Syntellect Studio
* CTI Link Resiliency
* Support for Windows Server 2008
The new capabilities included with the Communications Portal 7.2 are in addition to the already extensive list of features that are part of the award-winning solution, including:

* A graphical programming environment that reduces development time by 50% or more
* A proven solution for voice over IP (VoIP) deployments; plus, the flexibility to implement voice solutions in TDM and mixed networks
* An embedded VoiceXML browser for seamless execution of VoiceXML scripts and applications
* Support for Web services, which streamlines integration with enterprise applications and data warehouses
* Compatibility with Syntellect CT Connect™, Syntellect’s industry-leading computer telephony integration (CTI) software, which provides skills-based routing and agent screen pops for contact centers, enabling them to personalize customer interactions and shorten calls
* Numerous integrations for leading telephony and speech products, including the natural language speech recognition technology from Nuance and others
* A reliable runtime environment that has processed billions of calls since its introduction and supports high-density and high-availability applications
* Powerful management tools for easily configuring, monitoring and managing large-scale deployments

To learn more about Syntellect’s Communication Portal click here or email Syntellect at info@syntellect.com.

To read complete Press Release: Click Here.
About Syntellect
At Syntellect, we help our customers create, maintain and continuously improve superior end-to-end service for their customers – personalized service that values their preferences from the way they contact a business, to the level of help desired. We measure our success by our ability to implement and continuously support solutions for our customers. With two decades of pioneering leadership and thousands of solutions deployed globally, Syntellect is a premier provider of enterprise-class contact center solutions for the utilities, financial services, government, high-technology, help desk, consumer products, and healthcare industries.

Syntellect is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, with additional offices in North America and the United Kingdom.

For more information about Syntellect, Inc. visit www.syntellect.com

Syntellect Contact:
Bruce Petillo, Marketing Manager
602-789-2755
bpetillo@syntellect.com

Disclaimer

Here are few disclaimer of the blog:-

I will write about my experiences, information acquired during my working with various CTI hardware, like Dialogic, Synway, TelcoBridge, AudioCodes etc. as well as various IVR Application Development Tools like VB Voice, ExtendIVR and others. I may also write about Call Center, Contact Center, Telecom Switches, Telecom Companies, EPABX, Telecom Technologies, Jargon etc.

1. Though I try to write all information here as accurate as possible, but I may make few stupid mistakes too. So I request readers of this blog kindly to verify facts whenever there is some confusion.

2. For any technical details of any products are normally copy paste with proper link back to source.

3. All news items are normally Googled/Yahooed from Internet.

4. I will keep updating any posts without any notice. So I have added an widget “Recently Updated Posts” at the right most column.

5. All comments are moderated. Kindly do not expect comments to appear right away after you have submitted. I live in India and keep traveling frequently, so I may take time to moderate sometime.

6. I have been writing all articles myself, but I may have been influenced by articles from net.  After all, knowledge has to be shared! Still if you disagree, one comment should be enough for me to remove the post all together.

7. For any dispute refer to #6.

8. Thank you for reading so far. I will keep updating this disclaimer too!

With the price hike in Dialogic, many of my clients have been asking me about alternatives. I have also started searching for some alternatives of Dialogic. I will be building a list and comparative article on them. Kindly send me any company.

Here is one company I am looking at presently

AudioCodes Ltd. : AudioCodes Ltd. enables the new voice infrastructure by providing innovative, reliable and cost-effective Voice over Packet technology and Voice Network products to OEMs, network equipment providers and system integrators. AudioCodes provides its customers and partners with a diverse range of flexible, comprehensive media gateway, server and processing technologies, based on VoIPerfect™ – AudioCodes’ underlying, best-of-breed, core media gateway architecture. The company is a market leader in voice compression technology and is a key originator of the ITU G.723.1 standard for the emerging Voice over IP market. AudioCodes voice network products feature media gateway and media server platforms, which function as core gateways or CPE voice gateways for packet-based applications in the wireline, wireless, broadband access, and enhanced voice services markets. AudioCodes enabling technology products include VoIP, CTI and call logging communication boards, VoIP media gateway processors and modules.

Partnering with AudioCodes enables OEMs, Network Equipment Providers, Systems Integrators and Enterprises to build cutting-edge solutions based on AudioCodes’ reliable, flexible, and comprehensive technology offerings – all under one roof.

The company’s shares are traded on NASDAQ (symbol: AUDC) and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. AudioCodes’ headquarters and R&D facilities are located in Lod, Israel, with U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. Additional offices are in Boston (MA), Chicago (IL), Research Triangle Park (NC), Somerset (NJ) Beijing, Tokyo, Paris and London.