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Artificial Intelligence and the Future of IVR

3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

March 04, 2016

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of IVR

By Rory Lidstone, Contributing Writer

There are plenty of good arguments for why companies should still invest in an interactive voice response (IVR) solution, but there are plenty of scenarios that might understandably turn a business away from relying on IVR. After all, an IVR is interactive, not intelligent. If not programmed with all the static options a customer might need, it at best slows down the time until a customer gets to speak to a live agent. At worst, it may turn the customer away altogether.


But there is still value in IVR; it just needs to evolve to better cover customers’ needs. While there are enhanced IVR solutions out there that promise to enhance what IVR can do—visual IVR comes to mind—there’s only one way to make IVR more efficient: By making IVR more intelligent.

According to a recent article from Curt Gooden over at 1to1 Media, it’s possible to make IVR a better call center tool with artificial intelligence (AI). Rather than presenting customers with options that don’t quite fit—or worse, a brick wall—an IVR system could offer an intelligent greeting that invites the customer to share their issue. Would you like to book a new reservation, change an existing reservation or is there something else you need?

By using algorithms behind speech-to-text technology, the AI solution can map the call and even anticipate new paths based on each response. In other words, AI-backed IVR could intuitively predict the expected path and move the call along to the next logical step in that path. Even if a caller responds with a no, the system could offer up another set of predictive options.

As always, the caller could opt out of the IVR in favor of speaking to a live representative, but the chances of this occurring would drop dramatically—and so would the associated call center costs.

It sounds great, but there is a downside: The technology isn’t quite there yet. But it’s closer than ever before. So don’t give up on IVR quite yet, but rather wait for its next evolution.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson
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