Now that most auto attendant systems come endowed with speech recognition an interesting question comes up: What’s the difference between an auto attendant and an IVR?
While one could easily argue that an auto attendant and an IVR do basically the same thing – automatically route calls without the need for live agent or operator assistance – they remain distinct based on their capabilities: Auto attendants typically offer callers a finite number of branching options – in other words, they connect callers to designated extensions based on the spoken request. Interactive Voice Response systems on the other hand offer an added level of interaction with the caller in order to obtain a certain end result. In other words, auto attendants work to match a spoken request with a name and number in the system’s registry and strive for accuracy. IVRs work to interpret what the caller is trying to accomplish, and then place them in a “bucket” (pay a bill, check a balance, etc.), where additional dialogs can direct them into “sub-buckets” that will allow them to conduct the necessary action.
The main purpose of an auto attendant vs. an IVR is to alleviate an enterprise’s switchboard of a majority of routine employee or customer calls that are simply trying to reach a specific person or department. In addition, after hours call support, and an enhanced level of productivity for employees when in or out of the office are benefits that an auto attendant solution can immediately add to an enterprise’s telephony environment. But that isn’t to say that some auto attendants can bring the benefits of IVR systems into play while still enabling a highly accurate call directory. One such auto attendant vendor, Parlance Corporation, offers a high degree of flexibility in the way enterprises can use their nameConnector solution to enable different capabilities.
“nameConnector’s primary use is to alleviate switchboard traffic to offer operational and financial efficiencies to an enterprise’s telephony infrastructure, but we can program the system to provide a wide range of additional capabilities to suit each customer’s unique needs.” explains Mark Bedard, Marketing Manager at Parlance Corp. “”Drill-Down” dialogs allow us to guide the caller to the destination they need to reach in much the same way as an IVR, even if the caller does not know who they need to speak with specifically,” he continues. “For instance, many college customers use these dialogs to guide students to the appropriate financial aid or admissions officer depending on their state of residence.”
As previously mentioned, auto attendant solutions such as nameConnector must be highly accurate in order to be successfully embraced by callers. According to Bedard, the accuracy of the data that is integrated with an auto attendant system is paramount, as it can have a huge impact on the system’s overall performance.
“Many IP-PBX (News - Alert) vendors, UC vendors, and cloud providers are bundling in speech systems to sweeten the deal with customers,” he says. “The problem is that none of these speech bundles are as robust as nameConnector, and without the fully-managed service component we include with every nameConnector system (most bundled solutions are offered as a do it yourself solution, or offered with managed service at an additional cost), users wind up with the same old problem – a speech system that has not been properly updated and maintained, and is now inaccurate.”
This of course leads to ever increasing amounts of calls to the switchboard, which negates the original benefits of the speech system.
“We see this all the time,” Bedard says. “Prospects say ‘No, no, no, we’re getting something for free bundled in with our new telephony system, no thanks.’ Then, six months later they call us back and begin discussions again because the bundled speech solution has been unsuccessful. We generally try not to say ‘We told you so!’ when they call back.”
Bedard added that nameConnector “brings a lot of benefit to the table when a company is switching from a legacy PBX system to IP-PBX.”
“As far as callers are concerned, with nameConnector, the transition is seamless and makes the switch that much simpler for the enterprise,” he said.
To learn more about Parlance Corp.’s nameConnector auto attendant solution, click here.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Patrick Barnard