Businesses everywhere implement interactive voice response (IVR) systems for increased efficiency, productivity and cost-savings. While many may shake their heads and say that IVR is an archaic technology, the proof is in the millions – both consumers and business decision-makers – who still rely on its services today. In fact, IVR is still a relatively new and rapidly evolving development. When dealing with high volumes of various caller inquires, IVR continues to serve as a prime choice for continued excellence, while simultaneously preserving a friendly and helpful user experience.

IVR serves as a crucial part in business transactions, as it is able to provide the ability to play and record prompts and gathers touch-tone input. IVR can also help recognize spoken input from voice recognition, translate text into spoken output for callers and – what it is most known for – transfer calls to available call center agents.

“Many customers claim they like to talk to a real person, but in reality, using live operators exclusively often becomes a very costly and unrealistic option for many businesses,” says this CostSherpa article. “For one, there are many businesses that cannot afford to staff the number of customer service representatives it would take to answer the volume of calls that can be answered by an Interactive Voice Response System.”

Additionally, if businesses mandated that live agents only be available in their call center services, wait times would undoubtedly shoot through the roof. We’ve all unfortunately been there, and while IVR works to ease this frustration, we find ourselves constantly bashing it for apparently “making things worse.”

Think about it for a moment – or better yet, think about this the next time you’re on hold, thinking about how much longer you’d be lingering if you were to solely wait for live agent availability.

Most of the frustrations that ride the coattails of IVR systems today are speech recognition-related, which should work to make the caller’s voice crisp and clear to the automated service. As we all know, however, this doesn’t always go as smoothly as planned.

Alas! They are already one step ahead of us, as the emergence of HD voice is aiming to completely transform this aspect of IVR as we know it. While this technological revelation is underway, it seems the landscape for complaints and hair-tearing is wearing awfully thin. As improvements continue to be made to the “voice response” section of IVR, users will see that IVR can truly provide them with the quick and easy answers they need to accommodate the fast-paced schedule of today’s modern age.

To learn more about the benefits of IVR, click here.

To stay in the know about everything IVR, be sure to follow major player in the industry, Plum Voice, on Twitter (News - Alert) @PlumVoice.

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