IVR for the Rest of 2011: Four Predictions
June 09, 2011
By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor
If you were wondering what might be in store for the IVR industry for the rest of the year, we’ve got you covered. Bearing in mind that nobody has a crystal ball, of course, at least not one that works the way you’d want one to, there are some educated forecasts, and here are excerpts from Acclaim’s predictions:
Acclaim Telecom certainly know its way around the IVR industry, and it’s provided a list of what they see as four IVR trends picking up the pace in the second half of 2011.
More creativity. This is a good one. America’s economic doldrums aren’t over, and probably won’t be anytime soon, as you can guess if you’ve seen the latest unemployment figures, but there are some promising signs on the horizon for IVR. With customers on tighter budgets and with less disposable income to throw around, companies are going to have to increasingly compete via non-monetary factors like customer service. For IVR, this will mean creative, innovative tools that help companies stand out, not just avoid problems, with emerging services like voiceXML, speech recognition and transcription, and cloud-based services
More mobile demand. Smart phone use will continue to skyrocket this year. Okay, this wasn’t a tough prediction to make, smart phone use is skyrocketing everywhere. What’s remarkable is how people are using them, though: Recent studies cited by Acclaim show that smart phones should surpass computers in 2011 as the most common way people around the globe access the Internet. So you can guess what kind of effect this is going to have on the demand for mobile IVR.
More interactive voice and video response. Similarly, as 3G and 4G technology becomes more widespread, and as more and more people are able to easily place video calls on the go, the very nature of telephone-based customer service will change from being about voice to being about video as well.
More of everything, really. Saw this one coming, didn’t you? A recently released global report showed the IVR market reaching an expected $20.9 billion by 2015. Goes to show, Acclaim officials say, how important these telecom products are to companies around the world. Speech technology and IVR solutions can be pretty much recession-proof, because they provide exactly the sorts of expense reduction and productivity enhancement opportunities that businesses need when budgets get tight.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Juliana Kenny