Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has proven itself a reliable and necessary tool for any business looking to thrive, and enterprises are increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the cost of common sales, service, collections, inquiry, and support calls to and from their company.

We’ve seen a lot going on this week in IVR news, so let’s jump right into it then, shall we?

Kicking off the week, Frank Eliason, Citibank senior vice president of social media, gave us some great tips and tricks on how to transform your customer’s self-service. Self-service should be a top priority for any business looking to expand and grow. Eliason explains that customers taking control is actually presenting a unique opportunity for customer service leaders to step up their game and give customers a voice. Eliason stresses the importance of first and foremost treating your customers like the human beings that they are, saying, “They’re not a number, but a person, and I will be their advocate.” This will ultimately produce a successful call center.

Eliason also addresses the idea of social media, which has worked its way into every business’ marketing and advertisement strategies. Eliason says that in order to use social media for ultimate optimization, companies must “focus on their product and on customer experiences,” “listen to [their] customers,” and “create share-worthy moments.” In other words, listen to the customer and the unique stories they have to offer, and you’ll notice an immediate impact on business.

In other news, CereProc has launched its new text-to-speech (TTS) CereVoice Cloud Software-as-a-Service (Saas), which will meet the needs of developers requiring speech output, as well as provide fast and easy access through its advanced engine, which works on any platform. CereVoice is expected to really shake up the speech technology market, especially regarding its ability to make high quality, easily accessible, synthetic speech.

“We’re extremely excited about launching the CereVoice Cloud service to users. It is a perfect environment for application developers who want to use text to speech (TTS) to enhance their applications appeal, but may have been put off by the cost of existing TTS systems or a lack of TTS experience,” stated Dr. Matthew Aylett, chief technical officer at CereProc.

Rounding up the week is an idea which is both very interesting and quite odd: talking to your technology. Yes, we all thought touch-screen was weird when it first arrived on the scene, and before that we thought having a computer in general was quite odd; what makes this revelation any different? Now you won’t need your fingers to interact directly with your technology – all you’ll need is your voice. This new voice recognition technology not only applies to navigating your cell phone, but also performs speech therapy for the hearing and speech impaired.

The technology works by listening to the user’s pronunciation of certain words or phrases, then offers criticism of pronunciation and analyzes their speech patterns – it even incorporates a new, interactive, game-like interface such as those implemented in classrooms to further engage users while working on pronunciation. If everything goes smoothly, you’ll be able to have a legitimate conversation with your technology just as easily as you would with your friend or family member. So if you ever dreamt of one day being able to talk to your computer, that dream is now coming true.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s taste of IVR; for more information and weekly updates, be sure to check back same time and same place, only at TMCnet.