Speech recognition in IVRS has become more of a necessity after mobile phones have arrived. POTS ( Plain Old Telephone ) System have telephone instrument with proper keypad along with head-set. Procedure of calling is suitable for pressing DTMF based interaction with IVR System!

You normally lift the headset with left hand, dial pressing keys on telephone instrument using your right hand. So, when IVR is connected and you are listening to the voices by IVR System as well as pressing keys! While in a mobile phone, the tiny instrument itself is head-set, so when you are listening to IVR instructions, it is almost impossible to press keys without removing from your ear and looking at keys! The one solution is to use ear-phone or blue-tooth powered wireless headset!

Most probably, this has given prompted IVR developers as well as CTI vendors to come out with speech recognition for IVR Input. Though, speech recognition has evolved a lot, still speech recognition can not claim to perform 100%. This happens mainly because of pronunciation, accents of language from one region to another.

There are many speech recognition engines available. Nuance, Loquendo, Microsoft, Spinvox etc. are few companies which provide speech recognition engines on various technologies.

IVR with speech recognition capabilities are supposed to more advanced and suitable for mobile user, but it is actually very difficult to predict if the IVR application and speech engine will be able to recognise speech command properly. But IVR with Speech Recognition has been on the rise and every IVR Company now a days provide speech recognition. CTI vendors too support speech recognition in their hardware.

But still many people like me, will prefer to use DTMF for giving command to IVR as it sounds more technical. Most probably some people will take time get used to the idea of commanding some invisible machines by speaking!

The menus that IVRS can provide are either voice enabled or DTMF enabled. Now what does that mean?

• In a voice enabled IVRS, caller will have to choose his required menu option by speaking out a word or a phrase as if he is talking to a human! IVR is supposed to recognize his speech and provide him required information as per his choice!
• In a DTMF enabled IVRS, caller has to press a button on the keypad of his telephone instrument or mobile phone( Dude, where is my button on my iPhone 3G phone ?). DTMF stands Dual Tone Multiple Frequencies! It is in-band signaling ( meaning it’s a signaling that works in voice band, 300Hz to 3400Hz). So when you press a button or a key on your telephone instrument, you produce a DTMF, remember you get to hear a sound whenever you press a key? You are producing a DTMF corresponding to the number of the key. This number is detected by IVRS and provides you with your desired information.

Well, you can definitely have a hybrid menu using both the methods!

Now that you know availability of two kinds of menus, are you in fix to decide which one to choose for your IVRS ? Here I am, I am listing out the advantage and disadvantage of both the menu system. And I will also give you thumbs rule for choosing menu.

Here are the advantages of having voice or speech enabled menu

• Big advantage for Mobile users. Its much easier just to speak out the menu since mobile phones are small to press buttons! You need to listen the menu, bring it in front to look the screen, press the button, then again put the phone in your ear!
• Unlimited and user-friendly menu options.
• Easy menu browsing. One can jump from one menu to the other easily.
• Simple speech, no jargon of learning tone dialing, pulse dialing or DTMF key.

Here are disadvantages

• ASR ( Automatic Speech recognition) does not work successfully in every condition. It may not work in noisy conditions, weak signal, disturbance on lines.
• It might irritate many people for making them to talk to a machine. And then its not easy to talk some phrases or words like a conversation.

Advantages of DTMF based menu

• Ease of use in case of landline and while people using a hands-free for mobile.
• Widely known and trained standard. Almost everyone now a days know about tone dialing or using IVRS by pressing keys.
• Very reliable as the DTMF signals does not get distorted even while speaking simultaneously.
• Easy to develop and commission. Faster response by IVRS.

Disadvantage

• Finding keys may be difficult as per menu prompts, specially for new mobile phones with touch pad only keys.
• Many people does not understand pulse dialing, tone dialing, hash buttons, star button etc.

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So, over all, having DTMF is better where your target user of the IVRS is more and come from diverse background. If you are expecting educated, tech-savvy clients to dial your IVRS, give the ‘xing’ thing, Voice based menu!

Over all its recommended that DTMF be used and Voice based menu should be used as alternative of DTMF based menu. So, hybrid menu options can be chosen. For IVRS using as VAS(Value Added Service) or Voice Portal, having Hybrid Menu has become essential.

IVRS can be directly compared with a website! So many people aptly say IVRS to be a Voice Portal. It does not compete with website, rather it complements the website. The way any organization has an website, it must have one IVRS too.

Some of the important reasons to have IVRS are:
1. Providing information about the company 24 hours a day. And customer does not have to come to the office of the company, rather he can just use his phone and make a call. Just like visiting a website.
2. Executive of a company has to provide same information again and again to different and new customers again and again. It can be made fully automated using an IVRS. It will not only reduce cost, it will also decrease the hold time for the customer.
3. IVR is used widely many enquiry and complaint logging systems. So in a service industry, having a IVRS is a must.
4. For customer support, with IVRS, many customer problems can be sorted out without any human intervention. Also, it helps gather the support engineer required mundane and routine information much faster helping both the customer and the company.

Some Industrial sectors that use IVRS or must use widely are:

1. Transport industry – Enquiry, Reservation and status.
2. Medical Industry – Reporting, Appointment, and immediate alert.
3. Banking – Account Information, Transaction Information, Tele-banking
4. Telecom – Subscriber Information, Service Activation-deactivation, Billing Information, many more.
5. Service Industry – Customer Support and scheduling of service
6. Manufacturing – Stock Update, Enquiry
7. BPO – IVRS is integral part of a call center

Any company that has a customer support division and complaint registration must have IVRS. It will greatly improve efficiency, lower cost, improve brand image. And much more!

These are many small, but important design problems one often tends to overlook. I have tried to list them all. Kindly send me feedback if you have encountered any such problems. In a DTMF Based Menu Following are the frequently overlooked problems :->

1. Long Menu
Be it DTMF Driven menu or Voice driven menu, long menu with many options should be avoided. The maximum menu options should be 5. ( Maximum 7 in unavoidable cases. ) Long menu tires a caller out and it becomes very difficult for caller to remember the options too. Also if a caller’s required option is played at the last of the menu( for example 9th option in the menu, one has to hear out first 8 options before hearing the 9th option.), it becomes really irritating.

2. Long Period of Silence
Long period of silence at any case should be avoided. Maximum allowable silence period should be 3 Seconds. After that a proper timeout message should be played.

3. Rejection of key pressing during prompt playing.
It is often noticed that IVR ignores the key pressed while it is playing menu options. This should be avoided. Specially while playing a long menu of 4 and above options. During playing prompts too, keys pressed by caller should be accepted and processed accordingly.

4. Hang Up calls
IVRS should never hang up the call at any condition. Its like slamming the phone on you! You cause enough pain already by making a human interact with a machine, so it will be worthwhile that machine does not hang up on the human!

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5. Scripting of IVR Prompts
Scripting of IVR menus and any information should be properly written. Many people do not give enough importance in scripting their information. Scripts like You have pressed a wrong key, You have failed to press a key in time, etc. should eb avoided.

6. Confusing and illogical presentation of Information
All information given by IVRS should be brief, to-the-point, in simple english and complete. Unnecessary jargons should be avoided.

7. Failure recovery
On failure of accessing any data from a database or online information, IVR should inform politely to the caller.

8. Unprofessional Voice
Cheap sounding and unprofessionaly recorded, low quality voice should be avoided. One should always get prompts recorded by professional voice artist. Background music should be added only when the situation demands or service requires it.

In a Voice Driven Menu:-

9. In a Voice Driven menu the menu tends to be extra focussing on entertaining the caller, rather than providing service required by him.

10. Attempt to have a conversation with caller should be avoided. Even though ASR technology works fine, still it can not have a conversation with a human.

11. Avoid having excessive human like Interface.

12. Avoid playing prompts as soon as call is connected. Give some silence or play some music for small duration.

So you have made call to some one and you get to hear some other voice (pleasant, sweet and female! Or a stony, emotionless, monologue by your ‘someone’, “I am not here, please leave your message after the beep. Thank you. BEEP”) asking you to leave a message! Surprised to hear such a pleasant voice? (Are you stumped and look for piece of paper and a pen and then go crazy how the hell you are going to leave your message after the BEEP?) What were you expecting your lovers trademark Hello? Well that was a kind of IVRS – Interactive Voice Response System.

The example above is commonly known as Answering Machine, Auto Answering Machine, Voice Mail, Voice Mail Box, Telephone Voice Recorder, Auto Attendant and many more names. I will keep adding them, is not that why this IVR BLOG is for?
Now, if you ever made to calls to all those toll free numbers that starts with 1800(India) or 800 (for USA) and all?(Well I will definitely add these prefix for toll free numbers for other countries too and by now you know why ). What you hear ? A very pleasant voice, “Welcome to …” Well, if you were calling in fit of rage that your X stuff broke down for no reason and you want it rectified ASAP, the pleasant voice pacifies you! At least it does to me always. (If it does to you too, share me by leaving a comment). Then you are prompted to press some key on the phone, or you are asked to say your reason of the call. It also gives a list of options and how to choose the options. Or you might get to hear a background music while the “Lady” at the other end is talking! Hell, do you realize you are not talking to a lady, but to a machine ? Never thought like that ? Well indeed you talk to a Machine, and you are actually interacting with a very, intelligent machine with a very pleasant voice, who never gets angry, upset, only feel sorry when she does not understand you ( your voice or your key, happens often though) and she says that she could not understand and let you try again and again. Wish you had such a woman as your girl friend or wife?

Now you have realized that intelligent lady is called IVRS – Interactive Voice Response System! How crude! Such a lovely machine and such a technical sounding name!

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is widely used now a days. Call centers, Medial trials, complaint management and booking, travel industries. all use interactive voice response system. It automates many business processes and provides useful information over telephone.