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What is IVR?
IVR - short for Interactive Voice Response - is a technology that
automates interactions with telephone callers. Enterprises are
increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the cost of common sales,
service, collections, inquiry and support calls to and from their
company.
Historically, IVR solutions have used pre-recorded voice prompts and
menus to present information and options to callers, and touch-tone
telephone keypad entry to gather responses. Modern IVR solutions
also enable input and responses to be gathered via spoken words with
voice recognition.
IVR solutions enable users to retrieve information including bank
balances, flight schedules, product details, order status,
movie show times, and more from any telephone. Additionally,
IVR solutions are increasingly used to place outbound
calls to deliver or gather information for appointments, past due
bills, and other time critical events and activities.
To deliver or leverage IVR, an enterprise requires:
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IVR Platforms
IVR platforms are the "server and operating system" hardware
and software platforms on which IVR solutions run.
IVR platforms at a minimum provide the ability to play and record
prompts and gather touch-tone input. IVR platforms may also offer
the ability to recognize spoken input from callers (voice
recognition), translate text into spoken output for callers
(text-to-speech), and transfer IVR calls to any telephone or call
center agent.
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IVR Applications
IVR applications are programs that control and respond to calls
on the IVR platform. IVR applications can either be developed by an
enterprise, by an IVR development shop, or by companies that offer
canned IVR applications.
IVR applications direct the IVR platform to prompt callers, gather
input, and transfer callers to other phones. IVR applications also
call on existing back-end database and application servers to
retrieve records and information required during the course of a
call.
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Back-end servers
Back-end servers are existing enterprise servers on which the
required customer or corporate data can be found.
Back-end servers can include databases, mainframes, Java or other
application servers, and third party information services and
solutions.
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Telephony Infrastructure
Telephony infrastructure includes telephone lines, call
switching equipment, and call center Automatic Call Distributors
(ACDs).
Telephone lines for IVR can be standard analog lines, digital T1,
or digital ISDN lines. These lines are connected on
one side to the IVR platform and, on the other, to call switching
equipment including Telco switches, Voice over IP gateways, and
corporate PBX's; or in some cases, directly to call centers via an
ACD.
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IVR Experts
IVR Experts include employees and consultants who
know IVR technology and challenges well.
Ideally, IVR teams should include one or more members who have
experience with IVR integration, configuration, reliability and
redundancy, application development, and IVR solution deployment
management.
Voxeo provides solutions for all five enterprise IVR requirements:
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Voxeo's pure SIP Prophecy IVR Platform is an open, proven IVR platform that
delivers the reliability and flexibility required by the most demanding IVR
applications. Unlike traditional, proprietary IVR
platforms, the Voxeo platform is based entirely on open
Web and IP standards.
You can either purchase the Voxeo Prophecy IVR Platform for use at your
locations or pay a monthly charge to use the platform
in our pre-deployed hosting facilities.
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Voxeo IVR applications can be developed quickly and easily.
Again, unlike proprietary IVR platforms, the Voxeo platform uses
VoiceXML and CCXML markup - much like the HTML markup found on every
Web site - to deliver robust IVR applications that leverage your existing web
infrastructure and experience.
Alternatively, you can use the services of one of Voxeo's
application partners to develop your IVR application for you.
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Because the Voxeo IVR platform takes advantage of existing Web
infrastructure and experience, you can re-leverage the work most
enterprises have done to integrate the widest variety of back-end
systems into Web application infrastructure.
And if you haven't deployed web solutions yet, you can leverage the
Web industry's multi-billion dollar investment in web integration
technology.
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The Voxeo Prophecy IVR Platform works seamlessly with Telco switches,
enterprise PBXs, Voice over IP deployments, and call centers via
digital T1 and ISDN lines, SIP VoIP, and integrates with
most leading call center platforms.
If you'd rather not waste time, patience, and budgets deploying
reliable and scalable telephony infrastructure, our Prophecy IVR Hosting
is a great solution. We've pre-deployed thousands of
lines and hundreds of servers so you can avoid the headaches
of premise implementations.
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The Voxeo team includes many of the most experienced,
standards-centric IVR experts in the world. Voxeo was the first
company to bring enterprise VoiceXML and CCXML IVR application
hosting to market. To-date, over 33,000 customers and developers
have created more than 60,000 applications
using our hosted platform. Plus our Extreme Support™ team knows
our platform inside and out, and will answer your questions in
minutes to hours instead of days to weeks.
If you'd like to leverage Voxeo's premise-based software platform or hosted IVR solutions to
reduce your costs and delight your callers, please contact us
via any of the methods listed below:
Learn more about:
For more information or to get a price quote:
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