IVR systems have been part of the call center environment for years, and they offer a means to sort incoming phone calls by type and collect basic information about a caller’s needs. Historically systems have been preprogrammed to understand a certain handful of phrases and commands, designed to correctly sort the call. However GetAbby’s innovative real time IVR engine is changing the notion of what and IVR is capable of, and is saving its customers significant overhead in the process.
During this year’s International Call Center Expo in Miami, TMCnet sat down with the company to discuss the innovations that they’ve made in the IVR space.
“The platform grew out of a speech recognitions platform called “Abby” that was develop with Carnegie Melon, Abby understands speech in real time so diagnosis and remedy is much faster than with traditional IVRs,” said Wayne Scholar GetAbby’s CTO.
Because the platform has an engine that doesn’t need to be stocked with speech terms to work, it can manage anything from a simple automated restaurant reservation to a responsive CRM backed marketing system. If for example a customer calls a travel agency using the software, the system will make predictive marketing decisions suggesting the customer buy tickets to area attractions once it’s determined their intended destination.
With Abby Web and Abby Mobile call centers even have the option to employ recognition programs in dealing with incoming emails or SMS services, allowing a company to effectively handle customer concerns across a variety of communications.
“We have four main areas of focus,” Scholar Said, “healthcare, travel, insurance and government.” GetAbby is employed across all industry sizes from mom and pop operations to multi-national corporations and state governments. He says that trends in government usage have seen an increase as states scrape to generate revenue wherever possible.
GetAbby offers savings to customers by automating task that have historically required call center agents to address. By freeing agents to handle more complicated customer service tasks, GetAbby estimates call centers can bring the cost of inbound phone calls down to around $0.18 a minute. Since GetAbby can also be programmed to provide marketing space on your phone lines, there’s even a possibility that phone calls will generate revenue.
Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Juliana Kenny