A lot has been going on in the interactive voice response (IVR) space. From new releases to the latest trends and insights, this is where you’ll find all of the most interesting IVR-related news of the week!

This week, Facebook (News - Alert) made waves with its advanced new voice capabilities in its Facebook Messenger app. What this essentially means it that both Android (News - Alert) and Apple users can download the app to send voice messages of no more than one minute to one another after a recent update. This will serve as a way to supplement the previously text-only chatting with a more in-depth, understandable form of communication.

“As such, Facebook’s move toward mobile has great potential to shake up both the mobile communications and voice recognition space, although it will undoubtedly upset mobile operators,” TMCnet reported.

In other news, Nuance (News - Alert) revealed new plans for Android. Specifically, the company hopes to bridge the commonly seen gap between separate platforms to create what it calls “intelligent systems,” TMCnet reported. According to Matt Revis, VP of GM of Nuance’s handset division, this new solution is being developed to help better provide a speech-enabled personal assistant that can go beyond specific, limited interfaces for access anywhere that is cloud-supported. It’s also giving a bigger push to the Internet of Things (IoS) space – one that is rapidly growing and is expected to throughout 2013.

Wrapping up this week is news regarding the constant debate about IVR and human agents – and specifically, how to juggle them. One TMCnet report tackles this head on, providing detailed examples of just how each element of the call center works, and more importantly, how they can come together to work even better. In other words, one really can’t just rely on one or the other. “IVR and human interaction are meant to complement one another, and when done right, it yields phenomenal results,” the report explains. To read about this topic in more detail, check out the entire article here.

That’s going to do it this week for the latest news in the IVR space. To see what’s new next week, be sure to check back in same time, same place – only here at TMCnet.

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.