Hosted IVR Systems Get Flexible with Interact
April 20, 2012
By Juliana Kenny, TMCnet Managing Editor
While cloud computing is pervading many areas of communications on the business and consumer sides of developing technologies, voice software and voice communications are often in the spotlight in this regard.
Most consumers know what the cloud’s relationship is to voice through popular association with Apple’s Siri feature on the iPhone (News - Alert) 4S. But cloud-based voice software runs the gamut to interactive voice response (IVR) systems and voice applications.
Interact provides a hosted IVR solution that helps businesses develop applications in order to provide the best customer interactions. As many call center and telecom companies have been exploring the most cost effective ways to deploy voice applications, certain aspects of hosted platforms provide more flexible ways in which to do so.
With a service creation tool that enables end-users to develop voice applications, Interact allows for customized, scalable programming. Officials from the company noted that its “service creation tool enables anyone to quickly create, and deploy voice applications, brining those applications to market in an extremely timely matter. It’s an easy to use drag-and-drop tool to create your own custom applications, with all the VoiceXML (News - Alert) and CCXML code built into the nodes for you. You can easily create and modify call flows without programming using a simple graphical user interface.”
Hosted IVR solutions, as opposed to legacy ones, give businesses advantages in varied ways including cost benefits and improved support. And while many think that these newer hosted solutions only work for large companies, the small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) benefit as well without spending too much.
Interact officials noted, “With a hosted IVR solution SMBs can focus on their application innovation, and let us handle everything else. We take care of all the telephony management and provisioning, letting them focus on the applications that run their business.”
The flexibility of cost in a hosted model also makes sense for the SMB.
“Also, with hosting, there are no start up and hardware costs. You create your application, deploy it and pay for only the minutes you use running that app. For those who need help with the application development process, we also offer a wide array of professional and development services to assist you,” added Interact leaders.
Edited by Jamie Epstein