Hosted IVR

December 15, 2012

TMCnet's Hosted IVR Week in Review

By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor

Another week closes as we recap the news in hosted IVR.

Things are in full swing for the holidays, and thanks to certain technology, Austin-area children will be excited when they get a call from Santa himself with a little help from IVR experts at Audingo.

Along with local radio station 94.7 KAMX-FM, Santa will call kids when listeners text in a child’s name along with their number. Within 10 minutes, the man in the red suit will call and mention his impending visit.

"Nothing compares to sharing holiday magic with your kids, and seeing their faces when they – out of all the children in the world – get an interactive phone call from Santa takes it to the next level," said Michael Boukadakis, voice processing and IVR expert, founder and CEO at Audingo.

Read the details at the full report.

A special TMCnet report hits on the lack of speech technology when it comes to interacting with our desktop PCs, noting that we have a myriad of handhelds that we can talk to at a whim, but advanced speech recognition is lost on actual computers.

In actuality, the technology is there but it isn’t highly sought after or used.

Popular speech recognition solutions for PCs include Nuance’s (News - Alert) Dragon Naturally Speaking, a hit for people who aren’t so much into typing.

With speech recognition becoming a growing trend, will it soon become the norm in lieu of traditional typing? Read the full report to find out more.

Last but not least, IVR is becoming an important part of customer service, a new report says.

What IVR does for customer service is take what would be an inefficient system and make it not only efficient, but faster and easier for customers to use. According to the report, a recent study conducted by Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting found that over 80 percent of people prefer support over the phone as opposed to e-mail or any other support.

So what other roles can IVR play in the overall customer experience? Read the full report to see what was uncovered.

That’s it for this week’s hosted IVR week in review. Be sure to visit TMCnet’s hosted IVR portal for up to the minute news in this trending space. 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.