IVR Basics: What is an IVR system and how is it benefitting the businesses?

What is an IVR system?

Interactive voice response (IVR) is an automated system which answers incoming calls and provides instructions to customers. The customers are then able to interact via keypad or voice recognition to speak with an agent or troubleshoot issues.

Using IVR Payment Gateway, the businesses can benefit from the following:

1. Automate the customer identification process with voice prompts
2. Predict why customers are calling to speed up service
3. Collect important information from the customer during wait time
4. Prioritize calls based on value
5. Personalize messages and prompts
6. Handle high call volume and surges efficiently
7. Ensure customers are routed to the best agent for their issue
8. Track and report customer issues to improve future service
9. Reduce overhead costs, including staffing

Examples and benefits:

1. An example of IVR  Payments is when you call a company or business, and then you hear “press 1 for technical assistance, press 2 for sales support, press 0 to speak to the operator”. After you make your choice, your call is routed to an extension/call queue, or, for example, a voice message is sent to you. If your query is not prompted then, you enter an IVR submenu which offers more options that you can select.
2. In some cases, it is possible to completely avoid human intervention, for example, you can call your bank to receive an up-to-date account information or call your GSM operator and you can add funds to your account– all this without speaking to the operator. It is simply possible by following the voice commands. Interactive Voice Response is often used to make automated telephone surveys when the called user is asked to answer questions by pressing digits.
3. In this way, Interactive Voice Response allows the companies to handle higher volumes of phone calls, reduce costs and improve the customer satisfaction by minimizing or even avoiding the human interference.