Hosted IVR

May 12, 2012

TMCnet's Hosted IVR Week in Review

By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor

Another week, another recap! Let’s see what happened in hosted IVR in the headlines.

Rooms To Go, a furniture company, tapped USAN (News - Alert) for its hosted IVR needs, by being able to use features such as inbound, outbound and blended customer interactions across channels.

With a planned expansion on the horizon, Rooms To Go needed a reliable solution to ensure that customers past, present, and future, experience nothing but the best when it comes to service.

“Rooms To Go is America's favorite place to buy furniture, and USAN is excited to partner with this great company in keeping that brand promise. With our customer contact products and new social media solution behind every interaction, Rooms To Go will continue to provide an exciting and innovative way for their customers to shop for furniture,” USAN president and CEO, Steven P. Walton, noted.

In other news, Voxeo and IVS partnered up to roll out a new product known as Arca (News - Alert)+. The new solution from the two companies allows users to keep using their legacy voice applications on new and more current systems, resulting in better support for platforms like Twitter (News - Alert) and other contact expansion.

Arca+ takes the heavy costs out of upgrading, since it can easily integrate with current systems, resulting in better customer service and increased customer loyalty.

A special report on TMCnet takes a look at common mistakes that should be avoided when implementing a hosted IVR solution.

According to Susan J. Campbell, USAN’s white paper, “Five Ways IVR Systems Fail”, explains that the first and foremost issue is identification and authentication. Failing to properly identify the caller can result in proprietary risk. IVR systems should be designed with security in mind.

Another mistake that should be avoided is confusing menus. No customer enjoys being stuck in what is commonly referred to as “menu tree hell”, a menu that is long, complicated, or confusing will likely end up in an abandoned call. The golden rule is businesses should have no more than five options.

Read the full report here.

That’s it for this week’s hosted IVR weekly recap. Be sure to tune into the hosted IVR community for up-to-the-minute news on all things hosted IVR.