IVR Tips

May 1996 / Features / Make Voice Response Sing / IVR Tips

Successful interactive-voice-response (IVR) systems are a mix of science and art. Development tools can help with the science part; the art has to come from you. Here are some key points to keep in mind.
As in any development project, the first step is to understand the business problem you need to solve. Next, don't try to please everyone: Some callers hate IVR no matter how easy it is to use the system. Always give callers an option to speak with a human. If you use speech recognition, callers should be able to speak over voice prompts to move through the system. When you're specifying an IVR system, make sure the final product can handle your current and future call volume: Your IVR system needs to be expa ndable so you can add telephone interfaces and voice-storage capacity as the system grows.
If you want to use your IVR system in a client/server environment, make sure your system can handle the network connection without straining the IVR software. IVR systems should be able to multitask and provide multiple data-file access. If the host OS does not support this, the IVR software should. Finally, when considering IVR, plan to do a significant amount of research. Speak with developers as well as vendors, and examine each IRV candidate closely before buying.

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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