The New Best Call Center Practice: Speech-Enabled Interactive Virtual Receptionist

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are now widely in practice following customers’ demand to access self-service solutions. The popularity has increased and is being truly appreciated with the development of Speech-enabled IVR systems. It’s an application that allows callers to use their own voice rather than DTMF inputs. Moreover, it’s rapidly emerging as the latest innovation in cloud call center solutions and telephony-based remote self-service.

Before moving on to Speech-enabled IVR; understand what’s IVR. 

It is a telephony menu system that acts as a bridge between people and computer databases. Users/callers get the information they need or perform actions using IVRs from anywhere globally. Your business can eradicate the Barriers like location, language, and more with IVRs. The system helps callers identify the caller’s need, get solutions on their own, and route the call to the accurate executive if needed.

Now, speech-enabled IVR. How it drives better communication between customers and businesses?

Definition of Speech-enabled IVR

The solution allows callers to converse in a natural language. Also, avoid the hassle of navigating through long and complicated key-press IVR menus. The speech recognition technology understands the customer’s voice using intents and provides human-like responses.

About Intents

It’s a term for common phrases or words that customers speak during a call. Intents help the system understand the purpose of the call; while intelligently routing it to a dedicated agent in the call center.

Within the context of an IVR system, callers are asked to respond with a single word such as “yes,” “no” or “more” to be routed accordingly. Their reply will define the next step for the solution.

For example, if your business is of food delivery service, you can create intents such as order status, order cancellation, restaurant issues, food quality, etc. For each intent, you can add relevant phrases that customers may give as voice input. Based on these phrases and intents – you can configure relevant actions within the speech IVR call flow.

Initially, Speech-enabled IVR was considered commercially unviable due to technological challenges. But with improvements and the addition of artificial intelligence, speech algorithms, natural language processing, etc., the solution is becoming the user interface of choice. It is tremendously improving the user experience and reducing the cost load on businesses.

Gains of Speech-Enabled IVR 

The solution isn’t created overnight; there had been various challenges. Initially, it could only identify discrete numbers, monosyllables, and single sentences (only spoken with a lot of clarity and adequate gap after every word). However, language modeling helped the system recognize phrases and sentences spoken at natural speeds by multiple users. Many benefits are influencing the emergence of speech-enabled IVR. Explore some of the benefits.

Flexibility in Navigation

Speech-enabled IVRs have revolutionized greater flexibility in the navigation process. Callers don’t have to type every command or wait in the queue endlessly. The system encompasses quick and efficient resolutions. Moreover, it can process non-linear data, which was a problem in traditional and hierarchical systems of the past.

Reduce Costs

The cost of employing live customer service agents is rising at a quick pace, which is increasing the pressure on serving customers. Also, the speech-enabled IVR application increases caller acceptance, providing the friendliest and fastest resolution. That too at a reduced cost. Handle high call volumes and improve the productivity of the organization.

Handle High Call Volumes

The system has a quick response time. It processes requests and commands swiftly. If needed further support, the request can be routed to the dedicated agents. The speech-enabled IVR can handle simple transactions like checking order status, reporting outages, wrong order deliveries, etc. It can even take care of more complex calls that may require an agent at the end.

Better Security

The technology is designed in a way that can recognize and verify the speaker. It tests the vocal characteristics of spoken utterances in a conversational language. Hence, ensuring greater security for all types of data, including personal and industrial. 

High Productivity

The primary benefit of Speech-enabled IVR is motivating organizations and representatives to embrace speech solutions. Moreover, it holds the potential for dramatic reductions in operational costs. The system enables higher productivity of customer service personnel because a higher percentage of customer calls can be fully or partially automated. 

Let’s Wrap

The latest speech solution for IVRs includes various innovative features. Some of them are:

• Phonetic recognition of large vocabularies
• Natural language and number recognition
• Barge-in capability
• Speaker-trained voice verification
• Support for multiple languages
• Full integration with other IVR features.

Speech-enabled IVRs is an exciting leap forward in servicing customers that call in. It holds immense potential. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, then get speech-enabled IVRs. It focuses on improving customer experience and reducing operational costs. Technology can do wonders for your business.