I have many experiences with my clients or people whom I had interacted during their commissioning of IVR system, that they give least importance to the scripting as well as voice prompt. Most of the times, they discuss and emphasis on number of simultaneous calls, integration of the IVR with some CRM ( customer resource management) system or some other interesting IVR feature as well as its future expansion as well as maintenance. Nothing wrong for emphasizing on these aspects of IVR system, but after commissioning of the IVR, they have started changing the script as well as voice prompts many times over!

Many of clients have started out with TTS ( Text To Speech ) generated voice prompts and later ended up recording voice prompts by different artists in a studio! I have also seen some call center owner as well as some companies deploying voice recorded in office by some female staff using a PC and MIC, and putting the IVR into production. Invariably, they changed the voice prompts to studio recorded voice prompts from professional artists after one month or so!

While in some cases use of TTS ( Text To Speech) is inevitable or a must ( like retrieving dynamic data from database and playing them out), but there is no reason to use TTS or TTS generated voice prompts fixed menus, numerals as well as fixed names!

I would always advise people to use professionally recorded voice prompts in any IVR in production environment. While use of TTS generated voice prompts during testing and development phase makes sense, but in production, TTS should be avoided. Here are few reasons why one must use professionally recorded voice prompts only :-

1. Voice prompt is the only interface to the caller

In IVR system, voice prompts are the only direct interface with the telephone caller and telephone caller has no means to know about other aspects of the IVR system. A caller to an IVR system is not bothered about the technology behind the IVR system, or use of API ( Application Programming Interface) based on latest web technologies to fetch the required information for the caller at the back end. The caller is just bother about his required information and how quickly he could access it and how easily he could listen and understand without having to press any key to listen again!

2. Professional Voice Prompts gives seriousness to the IVR system

For many call center as well as customer service and support, IVR is the one which picks calls from every caller including the irate and fed-up callers! Professional, clear and pleasant voice ( I avoid using the word female) may have good effect on the caller and it may give indication to him what he may expect from the call! Unprofessional and difficult to understand voice prompts may scare away the caller or make him more non-cooperating irate customer!

3. Voice Prompts may make IVR caller experience pleasant

A clear and pleasant voice with understandable accent as well as pronunciation will surely increase user experience as well as satisfaction of the caller! A person may call to the IVR from a noisy background area and that will compound his problems in understanding IVR voice prompts or menu options if TTS generated machine prompts are used.

A professional voice prompt provider will always make the voice prompt in proper volume, speed, pitch as well as pronunciation which are a must for any production grade IVR system.

So, in order to improve usability and caller satisfaction, one should use services from a professional voice prompt provider, or at least use voice prompts recorded in studio by professional voice over artist.

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!

VXML(Voice XML) is widely used by IVR users who prefer to host their voice applications with hosted IVR provider. Mostly, companies or organizations who want to have their complete control on the voice application and do not want to invest in CTI hardware and infrastructure of running a data center along with telephone lines.

In simple and plain language, VXML based applications remain at IVR user premise and hosted IVR system downloads VXML codes to its server and executes the codes. By this arrangement, VXML based voice applications remain at the control of the IVR user while users of that voice application call up hosted IVR number and avail the IVR service.

Payment gateway, CRM ( Customer Resource Management) are few IVR applications which are widely configured to work in the above architecture.

Though VXML is preferred tool for writing such voice applications, as it works seamlessly with any web services as well as its similarity in coding with HTML. Now a days, many hosted IVR service providers provide visual tools for developing voice applications which are faster and simpler to learn and develop any kind of voice applications.

Main advantages of use of VXML for voice application to be hosted are :-

1. VXML is standard adopted by W3C and now supported by all hosted IVR providers. It provides flexibility to change its call flow locally without having to depend on hosted IVR provider.

2. Many high end PABX systems supports VXML now a days. There are large community who are actively developing VXML based voice applications.

3. VXML offers very high flexibility in terms of distributed computing as VXML codes may reside in many web servers which would be fetched by hosted IVR server. New VXML voice applications could be stored in different server anytime without any changes in hosted IVR platform.

4. Adopting new technologies like automatic speech recognition (ASR), text to speech conversion ( TTS) and other CTI technologies are easy for VXML based voice applications.

Though VXML provides many advantages, it has some disadvantages too:-

1. VXML interpreter introduces new cost of total IVR system which may increase cost of the IVR system.

2. It is not that easy to write voice applications using VXML and to maintain it, trained VXML coders are required full time.

3. There are many hosted IVR service providers who do not support VXML due to cost component. Other alternatives to VXML, visual tools like INVOX come with free for hosted IVR subscriber and much easier to develop voice applications.

So, for voice applications which need to be tightly integrated with other web services, VXML seems to a good choice while quick changes in call flow, visual tool for designing call flow seems better choice.

What is Invox ?
Invox is visual tool using which one can create a call flow of voice application ( IVR Application) and implement it without any coding in any language like VXML, VoicePHP or C++! It is an online web based tool which allows user to log in and design his voice application as per his requirement graphically, test it on Invox hosted IVR server and save it or start using it by buying a new phone connection!
Invox uses simple drag-and-drop method to add “greetings” on call connect, call transferring on DTMF press, data retrieval from database etc.!

So, one does not worry about specification of voice application, learning a language and than coding, just put together all ‘building blocks’ for any voice application visually and launch your IVR service!

It seems, Invox is the easiest and fastest tool design, test and deploy any voice applications as they rightly claim. I also signed up after a telephonic discussion Mr. Sreedhar from Invox who spent his time to teach and give me a demo of whole Invox thing!

It was a good experience to drag building blocks ( I always thought IVR building blocks are some API or class in C++ which needed to be included in any new IVR project) of IVR to create complete, fully functional voice application right from call pick up, welcome message, call transfer, information presentation after retrieving from database and call disconnect!

After trying myself few more times alone, I think Invox is the best visual tool for specifying and developing any voice application. I found it has many useful features as well advantages for non-technical person or any one who is not trained in IVR applications!

Few advantages I could think of :-
1. It provides the quickest time to implement a call flow any IVR application. In fact, when using Invox, designing the call flow is implementing the call flow as well!

2. Testing is very easy and convenient. Once the whole call flow is designed using Invox visual tool ( they call “phone system”), one can start testing with a single click! So, I think Invox provides the shortest time to go live with IVR system.

3. Since Invox offers visual tool for any kind of voice application, Invox can be the ideal solution for any hosted IVR service provider. When using Invox, hosted IVR provider will be able to setup any IVR application for their clients quickly, provide sample demo to prospective client in quickest possible time, easily give live presentation to anyone!

Invox Visual IVR Designer Tool

4. Old timer like me who belong to old school of development, to quote Mr. Charles King, using Visio to prepare call flow and then develop the IVR application, would like Invox as we do not need to learn VXML for specifying voice application but use Visio kind of ‘blocks’ to make IVR call flow! As per Mr. Sreedhar, Invox can generate a VXML code too, from a Invox “Phone System”.

5. It has many features to integrate with CRM, third party database, call routing, IM alerts etc.

So, does Invox have any Disadvantage ? Here are few I think where it has some limitations.

1. It is still in BETA!
2. It can not be used for smaller IVR systems with limited budget to be deployed on premise.
3. Still not available in India!
4. One still need to know about database query and type them!
5. Not sure how it integrates with CTI boards and if it supports majority of the CTI boards.

If you want to test drive, you may just sign up and test yourself!

Recently, I commissioned a IVR Software in a call center in India. I have gone through a good learning process about not only Call Center, but also how IVR can be used smartly to serve customers better, solve customer problems at shortest possible time as well as minimizing call agent intervention!

My client is a ISP (Internet Service Provider) as well as Cable TV operator. They have large subscriber base with almost 10000 calls to the call center a day with calls ranging from customer complaint, inquiry for cable TV connection, internet connection. They had existing CRM software and they were trying to augment their call center with smart IVR Software which could integrate with existing CRM software for lodging complaint and generate complaint ticket, retrieving existing complaint status as well as retrieving officer in charge for rectifying the complaint and expected arrival time at his premises. The IVR was also expected to make outbound calls as soon as a complaint is rectified and customer had option to close if the complaint is resolved successfully or re-lodge the complaint if not resolved to his satisfaction.

One more part was to send an SMS informing the complaint has been rectified if customer has a mobile number stored in its customer record. Also SMS intimation along with complaint ticket number generated by IVR system as soon as call is disconnected from IVRS.

We used Dialogic D300 boards and ISDN protocol. The total Call Center Software consisted of IVR, Voice Logger, ACD ( Automatic Call Distribution), IVR Triggered Agent Screen Capture Module, SMS (Short Messaging Service) Module and MIS ( Management Information System).

So, using this smart IVR Application, a customer could do the following without having to talk to call agent :-

1. Lodge a complaint, get a complaint ticket as his service like internet or cable TV. Complaint ticket is read out to him through IVR instantly as well as expected rectification time.
2. He gets an SMS alert as soon as complaint has been lodged which he can use for checking complaint status in future.
3. While checking complaint status, he could escalate his complaint if he was not satisfied with the status.
4. He could lodge an inquiry about new connection with inquiry number.

So mainly, with this smart IVR with integration with existing CRM, a caller could get a complaint rectified without having to talk to any call agent. This has increased efficiency of call agents as well as improved rectification time for any complaints.

IVRS is supposed to be force multiplier in the filed of customer service in a call center. But is your IVRS increasing customer satisfaction or has become an irritant to your caller ? Here are five Tips to make your IVRS a force multiplier in your call center.

1. CRM Integration

You must integrate your CRM with IVRS! Without integrating your IVRS with Call center, you can not say really that IVRS is improving customer service.  Integrating with CRM gives IVRS the features like identifying the caller with his all information and customer does not need to enter his identification details. This will shorten the time to serve the customer and customer will also stick to IVRS.

2. Allow Call Transfer to Human Agent

At any point of time, customer must be given option to speak to a customer care human executive! Many a time, caller knows that he has to speak to human agent only to explain his requirements or problem, and then if he does not find any option to speak to live agent, he might simply turn to your competitor. This is specifically true for general purpose call center or customer care. One must do a fine balance with call screening with live agent call transfer.

3. Never Ask Customer Details Twice

In many IVRS, it is observed that customer has to enter his details for using IVRS and and then when he is transferred to a human agent, he needs to repeat his customer details again to the human agent! Never ever do that! This will irritate the customer to no end and your customer care center may turn into customer irritation center. It may happen also when customer goes back to IVRS main menu and then he may require to enter his customer details again, never do that.

4. Precise and To the Point

Be precise and to the point in presenting any information. Also make navigation menus short, easy to navigate.  You should keep an option to transfer the call to a human agent at every level as well as go back to main menu. Long menu will scare away the caller and he would tend to forget the options.

5. IVRS Information

Always keep an Help Option the main menu. It should have information about the IVRS itself and what customer can expect from it and what not! Also give caller the approximate time for connecting to live agent! I would suggest you not to play prompts like “Your Call is important to us, please be online while we are connecting your call to customer care officer.”, this kind of message if repeated many times, may infuriate a caller, specially when the caller has a complaint.

The above list of five is not exhaustive! But the bottom line of most effective use of IVRS is : Customise your IVRS as per your business.

One of the best usage of IVRS is Complaint Management. Using IVRS in complaint management is a real value addition in customer care operation. Any organization which has reasonably large number of customers should go for IVRS. Here is how one can use IVRS in complaint management:-

1. Caller call up complaint number of the company and lodges his complaint, he gets a complaint number generated automatically by IVRS. Also IVRS will announce expected date of rectification or call back by the company.
2. Customer calls again. This time he checks for his status of previous complaint. IVRS retrieves the complaint status and announces accordingly.
3. Customer has option to transfer the call to human agent or transfer the call to other departments.

So with the above example, it is pretty explanatory that IVRS can be used for complaint management in any industry. Attached is a small call flow diagram for Faulty Telephone Number Complaint.

Call Flow Diagram for complaint Management

The above call flow is pretty simple! Here is some detailed call flow of complaint management.

1. Customer calls Complaint Number of the company. IVRS prompts the client to enter customer identification number of serial number of the product.
2. If customer ID is entered by Caller, it will check if any previous/recent complaints are there. If yes, it will announce the status, elese IVRS speaks out list of equipments purchased by the customer and asks to enter the faulty one. And continue with #4 below. Else continue #3.
3. If customer enters serial number of a product
4. IVRS will announce list of commonly known problems, faults of the product and asks for choosing one among them. Also this will have option to record the complaint in voice.

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4. IVRS records the choice by the customer, record the voice if any, and then store the above information in a database, generated a complaint number along with tentative rectification date and announces them to the customer.
5. As soon as customer hangs up, IVRS will create a complete database record and send out an email to the concerned person.
6. Another great enhancement is SMS. Once a customer lodges a complaint, an automatic SMS would go to his Mobile Number along with Complaint Number and expected rectification date.
7. IVRS will have record of all call activities as well as complaint MIS. This will help management of the company in improving customer care as well as monitor employee performance.
8. The IVRS can also be integrated with existing CRM or web based complaint management system.

There are many IVRS companies who can deliver such a solution as above. But integrating SMS and existing CRM is not that easy. Niche Tech Services (P) Ltd is one such company which specializes in customise IVRS as well as SMS and existing CRM integration.

The above two examples can be extended to any industry.

Toll Free Number and IVRS has very close relationship.  Big companies, apart from Teleocm companies, which have large customer base, normally have a toll free number as call center. In US, normally Toll Free number starts with 800, in India, it starts with 1800.

Recently I got an inquiry from a company in India, about Toll Free Number  and setting up a call center. After talking to the company, I realised, many people have either no idea or wrong impression about Toll Free Number. For Example,

a. Toll Free numbers are free for both the toll free number owner as well as caller.

b.  The procedure to have Toll Free Number must be very difficult. Lot of Red-Tapism involved.

c. One toll free number will have one line.

But, actually Toll Free numbers are free for callers only! Not for the company who owns the Toll Free Number!  The company has to pay for each incoming calls by the duration of the caller or as per negotiation with the Telecom Service Provider. That is why Telecom Companies can have their own Toll Free numbers! and in India, it changes circle to circle too! Even the Telecom Company has to pay to other Telecom Operators to accept free calls from them!

It is not difficult at all to get a Toll Free Number! But hey, if you are late in getting hold of Toll Free Numbers, you may not get those fancy, easy to remember Toll Free Numbers! All you have to do is, call up any Teleom operator, they will come running to you or at least that is what happens in India!
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One toll free number will have minimum 30 channels or 30 lines! Because normally Toll Free numbers are provided through E1 lines. And having a Toll Free number with only 5/6 lines does not make any sense, also Toll Free Number without IVR System in place does not make any sense! At least that is my opinion. So, for any IVR System for a Toll Free Number, one must have Digital CTI Card!

Is there any company which can offer all these services ? I doubt if there is any such company presently. You  may get companies which can provide you solutions with Call Center Applications, some will provide you CRM applications, some will provide you only the EPABXs, ACD etc. But the complete solutions of a Toll Free  Number requires the followings:

1. Get a Toll free number from Telecom companies. Properly discuss calls landing from all other Teleom  operators in your area/country.

2. Look for suitable call center application

3. If you have already a CRM in place, which normally one does before one thinks about Toll Free Number and Call Center, integration might be a nightmare! It is not easy to integrate Call Center and exiting CRM, but then it is not difficult too! but proper care and planning must be taken.

4. Call Center Hardware along with proper power back up.

So it is a complete turnkey solution! If you thought you would get a Toll Free Number, put up an 4 channel IVRS and you will have a call center running, you are wrong!