A Communication Revolution

IVR is paving the growth of business which are based on customer call transactions

According to the report published by Microsoft Research India, Man versus Machine: Evaluating IVR versus a Live Operator for Phone Surveys in India, "Interactive voice response (IVR) systems represent a potential alternative to the expense of a live operator. By using a computer to administer the survey, employees can spend time on less repetitive and more important tasks. IVR also offers flexibility in scheduling calls-an automated system can make many parallel calls during peak hours (say, 6-8pm) while live operators are typically employed throughout the day."

Technology is an enabler for any kind of business, so all the improvement in the technology should originate from the need of the business. It is not technology but how it is used in business is the important question as it varies from business. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology at the moment is sufficient to drive business benefits through effective implementation. Mostly businesses dealing with a lot of customer calls (B2C) and or B2B companies with a high volume transaction on calls with their customers are in need of this technology.

Boon to Business
There is more than one boon point in this business communication tool. First, IVR saves the response time to customers and makes services available 24x7 for the users for standard responses. Secondly, it saves the precious internal resources for the company. Thirdly, it projects professional image for the company. Fourthly, it helps in connecting with the right point of information in the company for the callers so enhancing the ease of use for customers or callers. It is seen that technology and finance startups and SMEs are keener to adopt such communication technology as it provides them with the option of mobility along without their operational expenses hitting the roof. Some of the early IVR adopters are those involved in providing Payment Gateways. PayU, BillDesk, DirecPay, CCAvenue are the few names. All of them have witness remarkable productivity improvement post IVR adoption.

Essential for Start-Ups
IVR brings in a lot of advantages to startups. Startups always have trouble managing their capital expenses and with IVR they can surely keep these expenses well under control. Secondly, the level of professionalism that a well recorded and structured IVR presents helps in boosting a startup's image amongst customers. An IVR system also reduces the need of hiring a receptionist only for the purpose of answering and connecting calls. The need for dedicated telephony hardware is also negated. "IVR helps in projecting big company image for startups that helps in getting revenue. The IVR system also makes business communication 24x7 in an intelligent way so the customers are responded 24x7 even after office hours so improves sales conversion of business leads. The call recording helps in listening to voice of customers so helps in creating the right kind of customer value proposition," says Ambarish Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Knowlarity Communications. The firm was formed in 2009 and has been showing healthy customer growth figure of 300-400% on year to year since 2011.

Does IVR lack personal touch?
However, IVR lack personal touch and can be confusing to those who are not in tune with the technology advances. Vijay Sharma, co-founder, Exotel believes that "IVR does lack personal touch if not done smartly. We in Exotel, use our own product, and have integrated that with our Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This now allows us to greet the customer with his/her name, and also follow up with the customer's pain points in a better way. It is not like you are picking up a call of someone you don't know, hence there is more context and more power to the agents/teams to solve the problems of the customer in a much simpler faster way." The firm started in July 2011, and had 50 customers in April 2012. Today it boasts of 475+ customers. "All this traction has come via online marketing itself and a large referral game that has kicked in due to our product solving pain points for our customers, and then referring us to their friends consistently," adds Sharma.

The Next Leap-from telecom to web
IVR is graduating from telecom to web and this is enabling businesses to become real time in managing business leads. The web has always been a more economical platform for leveraging such services. It is always easier and less expensive to host an IVR service through Voice over Internet Protocol s (VoIPs) and web infrastructure as there is no need for dedicated hardware or miles of wiring. This goes a long way in keeping expenses in check and helps in providing customers with these services at much lower costs. In short, the corrective actions are taken in quick time including better personalized response to customers. "There are two activities in any business to find the customer and to satisfy the customers. The IVR system in web helps in second part i.e. to satisfy the customers by facilitating better business communication, off course this must be supported by a good customer value proposition," adds Gupta.

Stumbling Blocks
Adoption of IVR technology has not been a smooth ride for any of these companies. "Most of the customers or prospects that we have come across are not early adopters of technology. We see that people are still willing to go through the trouble of managing multiple phone numbers rather than take a ‘risk' and try something revolutionary and new that promises to be far more efficient than regular phones," says Shivam Prasad, VP, marketing, Dialstreet. Dialstreet was founded in September, 2012. The growth of Dialstreet is pegged between 70 to 80%. The company has 100+ paying customers today in India. Speaking on similar lines, Gupta comments that "the challenge was rather to show business benefits. We got early adopter and early traction from real estate and education segments where IVR system dramatically improved the sales conversions from existing campaigns. Based upon the real time feedback from the market, the product is revised continuously."

The growth of this technology is also being marred by regulatory ambiguity and cultural resistance. Cloud telephony and IVRs are being well received by businesses worldwide but still see a dip in acceptance in India due to the regulations in place that hinder development and to a certain extent, slow down transition and service execution. "Perhaps if the government could ease off on a few regulations and speed up processes, the technology could witness vast improvements and advancements that are beneficial to businesses," adds Prasad.
Even Gupta feels that one of the biggest issues are reliability and robustness of the system that is also affected by the telecom infrastructure provided by telecommunication company over which IVR providers have little control.

Road to Perfection
There is still much to work upon to make the process of IVR based business communication perfect."A lot of work is being carried out on identifying the caller through voice i.e voice finger printing rather than phone number. Also, research is going on to understand emotional mood of the caller through the pitch and tone of the voice to help in better response from company to different callers," adds Gupta.