What Is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)? 

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Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a system technology that allows businesses to send automated, pre-recorded phone calls to their audience, who respond via their mobile keypad. Used well, it saves time and effort, enhances customer support, service and marketing, and improves customer satisfaction. Learn more about how IVR works and where it will improve your business.
Category: CPaaS
Subject: CPaaS Platform, Voice Message Broadcast
Detail: Beginner
Author: Morgan Berman

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what is interactive voice response

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a system technology that allows businesses to send automated, pre-recorded phone calls to their audience, who respond via their mobile keypad.

Used well, it saves businesses time and effort and improves customer satisfaction. IVR calls to dispense with the need to have live agents calling thousands of customers daily and eliminates customer waiting times being transferred between departments.

The information they want is quickly and easily accessible. If they need help beyond what the IVR call can give them, they will be routed to the right place fast.

Read more: What Is Voice Broadcast Messaging & What Is It Used For?

IVR is great for all industries. Large companies use it through voice messaging calls to improve their sales, service and marketing. When used as part of an omnichannel strategy, the system helps to send personalized and engaging messages to audiences across their full lifecycle.

interactive voice response ivr

Key use cases for an Interactive Voice Response system

The most common use case for IVR call technology is to enhance customer service and support. Businesses use it to manage high-volume calls and provide support via self-service options. In a matter of minutes, customers can receive information about payments, appointment reminders, order ships, and much more.

It’s also great for measuring the customer experience. Instead of sending email surveys that tend to end up in spam folders, IVR transfers callers to a quick survey immediately after speaking to an agent. A report from Invoca states that 66% of customers want to take a post-call survey. With the help of IVR, relevant customer feedback is efficiently gathered, and businesses can adapt their processes to customer needs and expectations.

Read more: Top 5 use cases for automated voice messaging your customers will love

Many businesses are turning to IVR calls to assist with their marketing too. Marketers can add a local IVR phone number to the SMS and emails they send to their customers, inviting them to call for a survey or special promotion. It is also effective for scoring phone leads and qualifying leads for specific campaigns by asking callers a few questions.
How different industries are using IVR

Some industry-specific examples of the benefits of IVR are:

Healthcare. Hospitals and clinics are using IVR systems to direct patients to the specialist they need and enable them to communicate directly with the correct department. Patients can also schedule/reschedule appointments by themselves, find out days and hours of service, and receive information about medical studies.

Hospitality. Forget about having receptionists receiving calls all day. Especially in peak season, hotels can use IVR to manage clients’ calls and give them the specific information they need about reception hours, housekeeping service, reservations, activities, prices and more.

Banking. 24/7 availability is crucial for banks. Financial organizations receive thousands of calls daily from people who are anxious to find out information about appointments, account balance and due payment dates. With IVR, they can anticipate customer queries and automate calls to answer customer questions quickly and effectively. They can guide them to a live agent for further support if necessary.

Soprano, your best IVR system provider

IVR call systems can be tricky if you don’t have the right technology partner. Performance and implementation need to be well planned and executed. Soprano helps customers implement IVRs with a holistic approach, as we understand our clients’ challenges and give them the best-personalized solution.

With Soprano, enterprises should forget about technical development, staff training, and huge investment. They can use our cloud-based platform or our low-code communication APIs to start sending bulk voice messaging almost immediately.

Integration is seamless: businesses can integrate our low-code APIs into their existing systems to interact with their customers and audiences in their preferred mobile channel. We provide APIs through HTTP and REST protocols to deliver personalized content via text-to-speech, pre-recorded audio, IVR, and password delivery.

We can also easily build IVRs that integrate with third-party systems, such as bots and CRM databases, to unify communications with other mobile communication channels like SMS and RCS.

Let our team of experts take care of the technical side so you can focus on your business and improve your customer journey!

Learn more about Soprano’s automated voice messaging.