As a leader in the interactive voice response (IVR) market, Plum Voice frequently gets asked questions from existing and potential customers about how to incorporate IVR solutions with computer telephony integration (CTI (News - Alert)). Users constantly want to know how they can seamlessly connect telephony infrastructure with IT infrastructure while maintaining efficiency, and in a recent blog post, Plum addressed this very concern.

The company wrote that screen pops are the most frequently sought after example of this technical integration, and actually all Plum agents have access to screen pops for caller identification. The screen pops include information about the caller including where he or she works as well as other relevant pieces of information.

Plum’s IVR technologies use the caller’s identification information to search for all relevant data about him or her in the database. “If that caller enters an extension to which they wish to be connected, the IVR, while transferring the call, also calls a subroutine that tells a special AIM client written in Python and running on Linux to send an instant message to the Plum employee being called,” according to the blog.

The system then sends a message to the Plum agent who answers the phone and addresses the customer concern as the agent already has a background on the client’s previous dealings with Plum, and record history.

According to Plum, screen pops are extremely useful (otherwise the whole company wouldn’t have access to them, right?) as representatives do not have to go through the whole “who-are-you-why-are-you-calling” routine every time they get on the phone with a customer.

Using this IVR/CTI integration, both parties stay happy.

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Juliana Kenny graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double degree in English and French. After managing a small company for two years, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web Editor for TMCnet. Juliana currently focuses on the call center and CRM industries, but she also writes about cloud telephony and network gear including softswitches.

Edited by Jamie Epstein