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What does my company need to deliver IVR?

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The equipment, technology, and support you’ll need to provide IVR depends on the complexity of the intended system. The following items represent the basic elements your company will need.

 Telephony infrastructure encompasses your basic communication equipment such as the telephone lines, call-switching equipment, and automatic call distributors (ACDs). IVR telephone lines can be standard analog, digital T1, or integrated services digital network (ISDN) lines. These lines are connected to the IVR platform and to call-switching equipment such as Telco switches, Voice-over-IP gateways, corporate PBXs, or the call centers themselves via an ACD.

 IVR platforms constitute the server and operating-system hardware and software platforms on which IVR applications run. At the minimum, IVR platforms allow you to record and play prompts and obtain touch-tone input. They may also allow you to recognize spoken input (voice recognition), translate text into spoken output (TTS), and transfer IVR calls to any telephone or call-center representative.

 IVR applications are the software programs that manage and respond to calls on IVR platforms. These applications direct the IVR platform to prompt callers, collect data, and transfer calls. Some IVR software can search existing databases (see below) to provide the specific information needed during the course of a call. Such programs can be designed by the company itself, IVR-solution developers, or vendors who sell generic IVR applications.

 Back-end servers house the enterprise’s existing data. Back-end servers manage databases, mainframes, Java (or other application) servers, and third-party information.

 IVR consultants are the experts who specialize in IVR technology and can help you with problems. An IVR consulting team should include employees who have firsthand experience with IVR integration, configuration, reliability and redundancy, software development, and solution management.

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