Chapter List

Overview

If the call center is the front door to your company, then interactive voice response is the doorbell.

Simply put, interactive voice response (or IVR, as it s more widely known) is an automated system for collecting information from callers. It s a customer-oriented front-end for your call center. That is, it s a computer system that lets callers enter information in response to questions, either through a telephone keypad or the spoken word. The caller then gets some kind of information back from the system through a recorded (and digitized) voice or a synthesized voice. They can also get that information back through a connected fax system, or a website. How the information is delivered is less important than the fact that the customer can arrive, input and review data at any time, even when your center is unstaffed.

Whatever you can do with a computer, you can do with IVR. Customers can retrieve virtually any kind of data from account balances to the weather in Chicago to the location...