A mouthful, wouldn't you say? IVR is the acronym for the computer you
talk to when you ring up the bank but the live bodies don't answer. The
computer with the soothing voice that's ever so glad to give you an account
balance, or a credit application rejection, or the number to call another
IVR, or a message to say that, while we're horribly busy with other
customers, we desperately want to talk with you as well, so be a love and
wait and your call will be answered in turn. Did you know that: IVR is designed so that the most frequently asked questions are dealt
with first for two reasons, namely quick customer satisfaction and lower
"handle time", which equals lower costs. IVR in the financial services industry can offload up to 75% of the
normal call volume handled by live bodies. Why 25% of you want to speak
directly with a surly, sensory-deprived, 22-year old chained to a desk with
a headset is utterly and completely beyond me. If you press "0", even when they don't tell you to, it usually
works. They can capture your telephone number, and the time that you called,
and the fact that you hung up because you were tired of waiting, and they
usually do nothing with that information. The wave of the future1
for IVR is speech recognition technology. This means a set of prompts will
be constructed that are built around "I" statements rather than "We"
statements, and ask you to tell us that your name is Zeus Quinn, rather than
have you spell it out on a touch-tone keypad that has no Q or
Z. The recognition algorithms are quite good; they're based on
linguistic parts of speech, so it doesn't matter much if you speak Farsi or
are from Alabama or both, the recognition success rates ride around
97%.
1 Which means the next six months.
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