When dealing with massive amounts of inbound calls, it can be very easy for any company, regardless of size, to get overwhelmed and overloaded. For this exact reason a breakthrough technology was created to really ease the burden of businesses. This breakthrough is called, Interactive Voice Response, or IVR. IVR is a technology that automates interactions with telephone callers.

Businesses are increasingly turning to IVR to reduce the expenditure of common sales, collections, service, inquiry and support calls to and from their company.

So how does it work? It’s actually very simple. When a customer calls, let’s say to pay a bill, with advanced IVR technology he can pay that bill without ever speaking to a real live person. As soon as the customer calls, the automated agent picks up and asks the caller what he/she would like to do. The automated agent will give the caller a number of very common options, or allow the caller to say, “other”. When the caller responds, the advanced system will pick up the response and further assist the customer. If the caller does indeed say, “other”, the automated agent will then ask a number of questions to try to troubleshoot the exact reason why the customer is calling and then of course help with whatever needs to be taken care of. If the customer still needs further assistance, the automated agent will then be left with no choice but to transfer the caller to a real live agent. Even so, the company is greatly minimizing the amount it has to spend on real live agents by using the IVR automated agent system.

“IVR capabilities allow callers to get answers to standard inquiries simply and easily, and in seconds, without the need for an agent,” says Nathan Torres, Vice President of Technology at Freedom TeleWork, an inbound and outbound call sourcing telecommunications solutions company. “Any company that utilizes IVR is bound to see wonderful results,” says Torres. Mr. Torres feels so strongly about IVR because he and others in his field have given companies and businesses worldwide the option and ability to downsize the number of agents they employ, thereby cutting back on unnecessary expenses. What was once a department of 500 employees can now be a department of 50 employees, if done correctly.

There are many other great benefits of utilizing IVR such as: quick and effective problem solving, customer “self service” and possibly the most significant benefit of all, 24/7 customer service. With IVR, a customer can call about a billing summary, get technical support or even pay a bill all at 2 O’clock in the morning, a key feature that can be very costly without IVR.

Hosted Call Center Solutions Specialist Freedom Telework Inc. is a Virtual Call Center that offers predictive dialing and, progressive dialer solutions.

Steve Cohen is the VP for Sales for Freedom Teleowork whom authored this article.