The ability to automate customer care functions is a crucial component of any organization’s customer service capabilities. By enabling customers to “self-serve” through a telephony-based automated system, or IVR, enterprises can often handle larger call volumes and drastically reduce call center agent costs.

When implementing an IVR, however, it’s critical that organizations align consumer needs with the needs of the business. Callers expect service that is fast and relevant, yet businesses want to reduce costs through self-service. In order to meet both of these needs, organizations are increasingly migrating from traditional premises-based (CPE) IVR systems to hosted systems which deliver IVR as a service. These new, next-generation IVR systems are doing what their predecessors could not – driving cost reduction thru exceptional customer experience.

In the classic on-premise deployment, a CPE vendor sells a box and then leaves, returning only to conduct costly software & hardware upgrades. The hosting provider, on the other hand, sustains an ongoing partnership with the enterprise, and is rewarded for improved results. Naturally, the hosting provider is dedicated to creating a better service through continuous improvements. As a result, a hosted self-service environment often delivers a significant increase in automation over an on-premise deployment.

The next-generation IVR, then, is a break from the past – and from the notorious limitations of legacy IVR systems. This new generation of IVRs delivers hosted speech as a service, providing an intelligent system that leverages the latest technologies to efficiently and dynamically handle complex tasks – providing a true value exchange between businesses and their customers.

The bottom line for any system – it must understand what callers say and want and allow for rapid completion of tasks. This requires:

1) Deploying the latest speech technology and being able to refine it over time across consumers and applications. Continual tuning leads to higher automation and a better caller experience.
2) Having a large volume of data available for analysis, as well as the experts and tools available to analyze it: the more calls, the more accents, pronunciations and figures of speech, the better the understanding. In a hosted environment, improvements can be perpetuated to all customers immediately – a wave of improvement lifts all boats. This is especially critical with the rise of the mobile consumer. By 2010, 70% of calls to call centers are expected to be handled over mobile phones. It is imperative that speech applications perform well for mobile callers in noisy environments.
3) Having the infrastructure to drive personalized interactions for faster service – including a rules engine and real time configuration capabilities. For example, a mobile consumer calling his airline about an imminent flight should receive an immediate and relevant response, such as, “are you calling about your flight this afternoon?”
4) Having an A/B testing environment to support data driven refinement of interactions. This is the ability to have the right web tools and reporting to safely & efficiently test in production new technologies and new designs and their impact on a specific caller, a percentage of callers or a category of callers.
With the above-mentioned attributes, a hosted IVR is capable of consistently ensuring great self-service interactions with customers, while achieving high automation rates and saving customers’ valuable time.

Lastly, I’d like to take a look at the cost comparisons of a hosted model vs. a CPE-based-IVR. While premises-based systems require large upfront capital investments and periodic upgrades, (not to mention time-consuming development and change request cycles) hosted systems’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) model involves a low up-front investment, and pay-for-performance pricing. According to McKinsey & Company, economics favor a hosted model over CPE-based IVR, even when ongoing

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