A Guide to Conversational IVR

Conversational IVR represents a software system utilising voice commands, enabling customer interaction with IVR systems through telephony channels. Voice gateways have allowed modern chatbots to integrate with existing telephony engagement via SIP/RTP technology.

What Exactly is Conversational IVR?

Natural language processing brings understanding of intent and context to standard telephony systems, eliminating burdensome hierarchical menus. These systems enable customer self-service within the IVR framework, providing human-like multi-turn interactions through leveraging NLP, AI, and machine learning capabilities.

What's the Difference Between Conversational IVR and Legacy IVR?

Traditional IVR systems, commercialised in 1973, operate as touch-tone input and voice output systems with pre-recorded prompts requiring numeric key responses. This approach creates cumbersome experiences with large menus and multiple options.

Modern conversational IVR allows complete phrase communication through natural language understanding. Callers describe inquiries in their own language, matched to intent through NLP technology. Machine learning enhances NLP capabilities, training systems to recognise thousands of different intents expressed hundreds of different ways.

Is Conversational IVR Right for Your Business?

Larger organisations handling substantial call volumes benefit most significantly. However, businesses experiencing demand spikes where agents struggle with timely responses may achieve faster ROI implementation. Any scenario involving repeat-demand for specific customer inquiries represents potential pain points where conversational IVR could deliver positive impact.

Serve Your Customers Faster with More Precision

Conversational IVR reduces time required per client support interaction. Users typically request intentions through single sentences rather than navigating confusing menu systems. Natural language and machine learning enable continuous system improvement.

Cut Costs

IBM research indicates worldwide companies spend over $1.3 trillion to serve 265 billion customer calls each year. A Forrester report on smart IVR technology's total economic impact projected returns on investment between 103% and 291% across three years.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Current opinions shift toward acceptance alongside rising adoption of personal assistants (Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, Alexa) on smart devices and mobile platforms. Popular voice-controlled assistant satisfaction ratings reach 80% or higher. Carefully designed voice assistants empowered through agent assist enable superior customer service provision.

Conversational IVR Provides Better Customer Support

Modern conversational IVR modernises conventional IVR principles through AI and machine learning innovations. Smart IVR addresses complex inquiries, providing real-time responses within seconds. Technology enables streamlined features: sentiment analysis, call routing, fall-back handling, and energy detection tracking. When customers need agent connection, systems seamlessly connect them while retaining previously shared information.