For the past two decades, the dual tone multi-frequency interactive voice response has been used by businesses for the purposes of phone-based routing and self-service functionality. But today, a large number of businesses are investing in the newer speech-enabled IVR to move beyond the limitations of DTMF and further improve routing and self-service capabilities.

At the end of 2004, the North American IVR market was worth approximately $600 million. Of this figure, the US accounted for $557 million or 92.9%, while Canada accounted for $43 million or 7.1%.

In 2004, the EMEA IVR market was worth approximately $262 million and is expected to grow to $420 million by 2009 at a CAGR of 9.7%. By 2009, IVR port shipments are expected to grow to 226,000 at a CAGR of 10.7%.

A report available from Datamonitor has gathered results from a study of 400 call center managers in the North American and EMEA markets. Interviewed over 30 companies in the IVR and speech markets in North America and EMEA, collecting IVR port shipment data and segmented DTMF and speech ports by traditional IVR, Voice-XML and SALT.

The report is titled The Definitive Guide to the IVR Marketplace: North America and EMEA and bills itself as an investigation into the market uptake and demand for DTMF and speech technologies in traditional IVR, Voice-XML and SALT platforms in the IVR market. And hey, its yours for the price of $3,395.

The study also researched uptake of IVRs by specific vertical markets.

For the past few years, the report finds, the North American and EMEA IVR market has been volatile reflecting the market's downturn due to the tepid IT spending climate. However, in the past 18 months, Datamonitor has seen a renewed uptake in spending on IVRs as more businesses began to replace, expand and invest in IVRs on a more aggressive level.

The report claims to find out where the DTMF-IVR market is heading in North America and EMEA, through port shipment and revenue forecasts. It also says it will analyze the adoption rate for speech-enabled IVRs in the North American and EMEA markets, and understand the uptake of open-standards-based platforms in North America and EMEA and what's driving this change.

David Sims is contributing editor and CRM Alert columnist for TMCnet.

To discover how contact centers can save money and increase productivity by making the switch to IP Telephony, be sure to attend TMC's IP Contact Center Summit May 24-26, 2005, in Dallas, Texas. IP Contact Center Summit is co-located with the Speech-World conference, where you can get expert guidance in the deployment of speech technologies to strengthen customer relationships.