IVR - short for Interactive Voice Response - is a technology that automates interactions with telephone callers. Enterprises are increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the cost of common sales, service, collections, inquiry and support calls to and from their company.

Historically, IVR solutions have used pre-recorded voice prompts and menus to present information and options to callers, and touch-tone telephone keypad entry to gather responses. Modern IVR solutions also enable input and responses to be gathered via spoken words with voice recognition.

IVR solutions enable users to retrieve information including bank balances, flight schedules, product details, order status, movie show times, and more from any telephone. Additionally, IVR solutions are increasingly used to place outbound calls to deliver or gather information for appointments, past due bills, and other time critical events and activities.

To deliver or leverage IVR, an enterprise requires:

1. IVR Platforms

   IVR platforms are the "server and operating system" hardware and software platforms on which IVR solutions run.

   IVR platforms at a minimum provide the ability to play and record prompts and gather touch-tone input. IVR platforms may also offer the ability to recognize spoken input from callers (voice recognition), translate text into spoken output for callers (text-to-speech), and transfer IVR calls to any telephone or call center agent.

2. IVR Applications

   IVR applications are programs that control and respond to calls on the IVR platform. IVR applications can either be developed by an enterprise, by an IVR development shop, or by companies that offer canned IVR applications.

   IVR applications direct the IVR platform to prompt callers, gather input, and transfer callers to other phones. IVR applications also call on existing back-end database and application servers to retrieve records and information required during the course of a call.

3. Back-end servers

   Back-end servers are existing enterprise servers on which the required customer or corporate data can be found.

   Back-end servers can include databases, mainframes, Java or other application servers, and third party information services and solutions.

4. Telephony Infrastructure

   Telephony infrastructure includes telephone lines, call switching equipment, and call center Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs).

   Telephone lines for IVR can be standard analog lines, digital T1, or digital ISDN lines. These lines are connected on one side to the IVR platform and, on the other, to call switching equipment including Telco switches, Voice over IP gateways, and corporate PBX's; or in some cases, directly to call centers via an ACD.

5. IVR Experts

   IVR Experts include employees and consultants who know IVR technology and challenges well.

   Ideally, IVR teams should include one or more members who have experience with IVR integration, configuration, reliability and redundancy, application development, and IVR solution deployment management.

Voxeo provides solutions for all five enterprise IVR requirements:

• Voxeo's Pure SIP™ Prophecy IVR Platform is an open, proven IVR platform that delivers the reliability and flexibility required by the most demanding IVR applications. Unlike traditional, proprietary IVR platforms, the Voxeo platform is based entirely on open Web and IP standards.
  
  You can either purchase the Voxeo Prophecy IVR Platform for use at your locations or pay a monthly charge to use the platform in our pre-deployed hosting facilities.
  
  
• Voxeo IVR applications can be developed quickly and easily. Again, unlike proprietary IVR platforms, the Voxeo platform uses VoiceXML and CCXML markup - much like the HTML markup found on every Web site - to deliver robust IVR applications that leverage your existing web infrastructure and experience.
  
  Alternatively, you can use the services of one of Voxeo's application partners to develop your IVR application for you.
  
  
• Because the Voxeo IVR platform takes advantage of existing Web infrastructure and experience, you can re-leverage the work most enterprises have done to integrate the widest variety of back-end systems into Web application infrastructure.
  
  And if you haven't deployed web solutions yet, you can leverage the Web industry's multi-billion dollar investment in web integration technology.
  
  
• The Voxeo Prophecy IVR Platform works seamlessly with Telco switches, enterprise PBXs, Voice over IP deployments, and call centers via digital T1 and ISDN lines, SIP VoIP, and integrates with most leading call center platforms.
  
  If you'd rather not waste time, patience, and budgets deploying reliable and scalable telephony infrastructure, our Prophecy IVR Hosting is a great solution. We've pre-deployed thousands of lines and hundreds of servers so you can avoid the headaches of premise implementations.
  
  
• The Voxeo team includes many of the most experienced, standards-centric IVR experts in the world. Voxeo was the first company to bring enterprise VoiceXML and CCXML IVR application hosting to market. To-date, over 100,000 customers and developers have created more than 80,000 applications using our hosted platform. Plus our Extreme Support™ team knows our platform inside and out, and will answer your questions in minutes to hours instead of days to weeks.

If you'd like to leverage Voxeo's premise-based software platform or hosted IVR solutions to reduce your costs and delight your callers, please contact us via any of the methods listed below:

Learn more about:

• Voxeo's VoiceXML and CCXML IVR Platform and Hosting
• Our Extreme IVR support and developer services
• Our free Evolution developer portal
• Our VoiceWorks IVR Applications

• Email Voxeo with your questions
• Call Voxeo at (800) 305-5771