Dealing with routine phone requests for information can take up a considerable amount of staff time and money. Taking care of a customer call with a live operator reportedly costs 6 to 8 dollars per call. What an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system offers is a programmed and cheaper way to present the same information more economically. An IVR system allows callers to converse with your company by the telephone. A business will normally implement a system to handle customer investigations. An IVR system can also be very useful for companies with on-the-road employees who need to call into the office to get their next task or to inform their activities.
Apparently, IVR systems lower customer handling costs to about 20 to 30 cents per call, and they can be used in many different ways. You merely record a message that is played when a person hits the proper number on the telephone keypad with the basic system.
IVR is an application creator with its own debugger that permits you full connectivity to the most popular databases containing Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Fox Pro, dBase, Btrieve, Paradox, or standard text files. IVR can be used to read information from databases, write information to databases, in addition to question and return information. IVR executes over various customizable commands. You can setup properties for each command just like you were performing the commands physically.
IVR applications are not stand alone applications. These applications are performed inside a mailbox on your system. IVR supports T1, E1, ISDN, DID, and analog interfaces. Callers can directly dial into an application or dial into the system and choose an application to use. IVR runs on Dialogic (Digital and Analog) boards.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will perform any application you create when a caller dials in by using DTMF, you can permit callers to interact with the system. Highly developed database technology permits you to read, write, append, search, and seek database information, you can record your product supply, setup games, keep track of your customers or patients, or practically any other application you can imagine. The progressed, inventive technology, backed by a simple, easy to use, drag and drop border makes writing applications easy. IVR generates revenue. Now, you may be reluctant to implementing an IVR system because it can seem unwelcoming, having one permits you to provide 24-hour access. Today, as long as consumers can still "press 0" for assistance, this exchange is one that consumers approve of.