What is Interactive Voice Response?
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephony system technology that interacts with the callers, gathers the required information and routes the calls to the particular appropriate recipient.
While using the modern, sophisticated IVR systems, you can gather the input and responses through spoken words with the voice recognition. Conversations are either pre-recorded or generated audio tracks that which assists, directs as well as guides customers automatically without a live operator required.
Within these interactions, clients can communicate by using either the touch- tone keypad selection or voice telephone input. The responses take the form of voice, call- back or any other related media.
How does IVR work?
To comprehend how does IVR work, the IVR system contains the following: a telephony equipment, software applications, database and the support infrastructure. To start with, the computer is connected to the company's telephone line.
An IVR software must be installed on the computer and also a special hardware is known as telephony board, or telephony card is required. When, as a customer, you make a call to the company, the IVR software will respond by providing you a pre-recorded greeting and then asks you to choose an option from a set menu. For example: by pressing the 'one' on the keypad you will receive a given service.
Here are several details concerning the requirements:
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TCP/IP network:
This is the internet network that serves to provide Internet and intranet connectivity.
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VXML telephony server:
A unique server that can serve as the interface between the phone and the internet network.
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Databases:
Real-time information which can be accessed through the IVR applications.
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Web/application server:
This may very well be the home of Interactive Voice Response system software. One important thing to note is that there are several different and unique applications built to perform various functions.