The newest method to handling and dealing with customers nowadays is to give them the option to explore and help themselves when calling for customer support. Whether its paying a bill, getting technical support or just simply looking for an answer to a specific question, Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, can help customers do just that. The process is quite simple. For inbound campaigns, a customer will call the company with a specific task in mind. Lets say its to pay a bill. The customer will simply say into the phone Pay my bill. Through the advanced technology of text-to-speech software, the IVR computer system is able to pick up the voice waves and patterns and integrate them into the system, thereby resulting in the rerouting to the next step in the IVR system process. The usage of IVR has been increasingly strong in the past few years, due to the advancement and progression of the IVR technology. The main reason why many companies implement IVR systems into their companies is purely to save extensive amounts of money. IVR can replace hundreds, if not thousands of customer service agents and deliver basically the same results. Instead of having a customer service agent assist the customer with paying a bill or with tech support, an automated machine can do it possibly even better, as it is recorded and given over with the most efficient and skilled expertise. However, certain tasks IVR can simply not assist with, or just not yet, in assisting the customer. For example if a customer has a certain specific detail that he or she seemed to find problematic with his or her bill, it might save a lot of time and headache to deal directly with a customer service agent rather than with an automated machine. Therefore, companies still need customer service agents; however, the implementation of IVR minimizes the demand and need of agents within the company. Another reason why a company might choose to utilize the use of IVR within their company is to be able to still assist customers during after hours. For example, a customer can pay a bill or get help with an online account at 2 in the morning. Traditional customer service methods would never be able to offer such benefits. IVR is also used for outbound calling campaigns as well. When used together with a Predictive Dialer in a Virtual Call Center setting, IVR can assist Virtual Call Center agents in shortening and filtering a long list of potential customers. Jennifer Gross, VP of Marketing at Freedom TeleWork says IVR can really boost any Hosted Call Center. When you put IVR, Predictive Dialing and Voice Broadcasting together and then take advantage of a Hosted Contact Center, your company is going to end up saving a lot of money, says Gross. Mrs. Gross also says that the utilization of TeleWorkers, Freedom TeleWorks online community of Virtual Call Center agents, can really help companies cut back on unnecessary in-house agents with high salaries by simply outsourcing customer service or soliciting and simply just paying as you go.

Submitted by: Steve Cohen, VP of Sales, Freedom TeleWork