IVRS - THE ULTIMATE MAN MACHINE INTERACTION

CTI based Call Screening System

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:40:00 +0000

One of the major advantages of CTI Applications is availability of huge computation power of computer along with telecom functions. Many telephone systems like PBX or answering machines can also have some computational power using which some call routing or other smart features can be implemented. But they can not perform highly complicated logical decision which is easily possible by a CTI applications.

CTI based Call Screening System

Benefit of IVR with Siri in IPhone 4S

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:46:00 +0000

Siri, the new IPhone 4S feature has created quite a buzz around the globe among smart phone users! Actually, this new feature can be thought as a natural progress in mobile phone industry, from keyboard input, touch input and now a voice input to get things done by the phone! For example, using Siri, one can get few things done like :-

Benefit of IVR with Siri in IPhone 4S

Key Press through during prompt announcement in IVR

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:38:00 +0000

One of the most irritating aspect of IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System is having to listen to the complete prompt before making a choice. While this is essential for first time dialer to the IVR system, it is really irritating and time consuming for regular callers who already know the options. So, many IVR systems give an option to press option Keys during the announcement is going on. While using speech enabled IVR where commands are entered through voice, the same procedure is followed.

So a good IVR System should be intelligent enough to recognise the first time caller and frequent caller by capturing and storing Caller ID. This may be useful specially in customer support IVR provided in Telecom companies. It may increase usability of IVR to some extent. Also, there are many IVR applications where entering data by DTMF is much faster, accurate and desirable.

Key Press through during prompt announcement in IVR

IVR for Celebrities

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:13:00 +0000

With evolution of social media like Twitter and Facebook Fan page, it has become easy for celebrities in various fields to connect with their fans. While some fields, connecting with fans may not be important or necessary, but celebrities in the fields like Cinema, Music,TV serials, literature, connecting with fans is an important PR exercise to keep their fans engaged as well as well informed!

For More :
IVR for Celebrities

Hosted IVR solution for Medical Emergencies

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:02:00 +0000

Almost everyone is aware of IVR ( Interactive Voice response System) being used to listen information over phone as well as lodging complaints about utilities. Recently, NTS (IVR Service provider in India) has implemented an interesting hosted IVR solution for Find My Info International, where vital information about a person running into an medical

Find My Info - Using IVR for Medical Emrgencies
emergency can be retrieved by dialing an IVR number by medical attendant or any good Samaritan who is helping the person just by using phone!

This is an web based simple application which helps people organise their critical information so that it can be retrieved by logging to website or dialing a phone which ever is available. Find My Info provides wearable accessories like pendent, wristband which are engraved with CODE and PIN unique tot that individual along with the IVR number and website address. This CODE and PIN can be used to retrieve vital medical information of the individual.

Read More :

Hosted IVR solution for Medical Emergencies

Why professioal voice prompt should be used in any IVR system

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 10:22:00 +0000

I have many experiences with my clients or people whom I had interacted during their commissioning of IVR system, that they give least importance to the scripting as well as voice prompt. Most of the times, they discuss and emphasis on number of simultaneous calls, integration of the IVR with some CRM ( customer resource management) system or some other interesting IVR feature as well as its future expansion as well as maintenance. Nothing wrong for emphasizing on these aspects of IVR system, but after commissioning of the IVR, they have started changing the script as well as voice prompts many times over!

Many of clients have started out with TTS ( Text To Speech ) generated voice prompts and later ended up recording voice prompts by different artists in a studio! I have also seen some call center owner as well as some companies deploying voice recorded in office by some female staff using a PC and MIC, and putting the IVR into production. Invariably, they changed the voice prompts to studio recorded voice prompts from professional artists after one month or so!

For more :-
Why professioal voice prompt should be used in any IVR system

Hosted IVR based Shipment Tracking System

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:07:00 +0000

In India, not many courier companies have tracking system on IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) system, though almost everyone has web-based online tracking system. Majority of the courier companies have their offices or franchisees in many smaller cities for larger coverage as well as networks in India. Most websites of the courier companies list the phone numbers of these offices for local tracking of the shipments.

Recently, I have observed that, few employees are almost busy all the time answering telephone calls in these offices and tracking the shipment according to the consignment number. On top of that, these employees majorly check the status manually on their computer and inform status of the shipment to the caller.

Read more :
Hosted IVR based Shipment Tracking System

Personal IVR for individual : Value Added Voice Mail System

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:14:00 +0000

Recently, I had a very interesting IVR enquiry. The person was looking for a hosted IVR solution for for his mobile number which will be diverted to the his ‘personal IVR’ after 9PM in the evening till 9AM in the morning. Apart from this, he also wanted the facility to divert the at will at anytime. And he does not want a mere ‘voicemail’ service which is quite common and easily available with any telephone company. Also, he wanted an SMS or Email alert for any call which a caller authenticate by entering a password ( provided by him to the caller) so that he knows it is an emergency and he may call back.

Read more :
Personal IVR for individual : Value Added Voice Mail System

Why Bulk Voice Calling is growing in India and will grow more

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:09:00 +0000

With more than 690million telephone users ( both land line and mobile), India is one of the fastest growing growing telecom market. Very quickly advertisers thought this an opportunity to market products and they started bombarding mobile phone users with various promotional messages which led to creation of Do Not Call Registry (NDNC Registry) by TRAI ( Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).

For more :-

Why Bulk Voice Calling is growing in India and will grow more

IVR Application in mission critical operation

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 04:03:00 +0000

The other day, I was discussing with Jarek of Ositron, my good friend from Poland, and he informed me about very interesting IVR application to be used in mining industry! Basically it is a simple outbound IVR application, but it can be very useful in automatic monitoring of miners working underground and alert.
For complete details :
IVR Application in mission critical operation

Importance of script writing in IVR system

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:35:00 +0000

Without proper scripts used in IVR menus and in information, IVR will not be usable at all, even by expert IVR users! It will be very frustrating for users and all the great technologies used to design and develop IVR system will completely go waste!

Importance of script writing in IVR system

Bulk Voice Calling

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:22:00 +0000

Bulk Voice Calling is broadcasting of pre-recorded voice message to many telephone numbers simultaneously or sequentially. It is voice or IVR version of SMS ( Short Message Service) broadcasting which is now a days widely used for various purposes. Bulk voice calling is also known as call blast, voice broadcasting, Automated Voice Campaigns, Voice SMS etc.
More :
Bulk Voice Calling

Open Source IVR ?

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:12:00 +0000

Recently, I have started getting mails about asking open source IVR as well as its availability for free, download-able from internet! Most of the people who have asked me about “‘Open Source IVR” have heard about Asterisk. Before going into the details about Asterisk, being open source IVR, I would like to clarify few things about IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System.

IVR system consists of four components, one can say. They are :-

1. CTI ( Computer Telephony) board
2. Call Flow development as per requirement
3. Voice prompts, TTS ( Text To Speech) Engine and ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Engine
4. Host PC or Server for #1 through #3 above.

Open Source IVR ?

IVR for Travel Agents

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Most probably, travel agents, specially the ones who provides services like hotel reservations online, must be one of those who use telephone for most of their business activities. Though the big travel portals or travel companies have call centers which operate 24 hours a day for handling right from inquiry to ticket booking as well as hotel reservation. But there are many small and medium travel agents which have good web presence, but can not afford to have a call center, or can not operate office 24 hours a day.

But with implementation of simple IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) system along with voice mail system (VMS), travel agents can easily operate 24 hours a day and increase their revenue.

IVR for Travel Agents

CRBT and Mobile Number portability

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:05:00 +0000

CRBT ( Caller Ring Back Tone) has been very successful in Mobile VAS (Value Added Service) industry ( specially in India, where it is said to generate almost 60% of the total revenue). There has been few discussions how CRBT will work when MNP ( Mobile Number Portability) is implemented in India. There has been few deadlines to implement MNP in India which were extended and now we have anew deadline of 31st October 2010 for its implementation.

CRBT and Mobile Number portability

Smartphone and IVR

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:02:00 +0000

In mobile world, we often hear about ‘Smart Phone’ . Now what is a smart phone ? As per Wikipedia definition :-

A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic ‘feature phone’. Smartphones and feature phones may be thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile telephone
Smartphone and IVR

How to port your IVR C++ code from Dialogic Boards to Donjin Boards

noreply@blogger.com (Uttam Pegu) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:58:00 +0000

One of the advantages of using Donjin boards is easy portability of C++ codes written for Dialogic boards to Donjin boards! It should not take more than one hour for porting C++ codes from Dialogic boards to Donjin boards. Though, recently introduced KeyGoe series of products from Donjin has totally different API than of Dialogic, but its TDMA CTI boards like DN300, DN600 etc. uses ’similar’ API as that of Dialogic boards!

How to port your IVR C++ code from Dialogic Boards to Donjin Boards