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Designing Call Flows By Using Interactive Voice Response

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[This is preliminary documentation and is subject to change. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is used to obtain information from the caller and navigate them to the appropriate queue. You can specify question and answer pairs that are used for call navigation. Depending on the caller’s response, the caller will either hear a follow-up question, or be routed to the appropriate queue. The IVR questions and the caller’s responses are provided to the responding agent when he or she accepts the call. Thus, they can be used to provide valuable information to the responding agent.

Overview of the IVR Features

The Response Group Service offers speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities in 10 languages. It also supports DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) data entry and the .WAV file format. When you create a workflow, you first select the template to use. Each template has a defined set of features. The IVR feature is available in the One-Level Interactive and the Two-Level Interactive Template templates.

Using the One-Level Interactive template you can ask a question that has two possible answers. Depending on the caller's response, the call is routed to the appropriate queue

The Two-Level Interactive template enables you to use a more complex IVR design to direct the call flow. It supports two levels of questions. You can pose a question, which has four possible answers. Depending on the response, you can route the caller to a queue, or ask a second question. The second question can also have four possible answers.

The IVR questions and the caller’s responses are provided to the responding agent when he or she accepts the call.

IVR Design Examples

IVR with One Level of Questions

The following example shows an IVR that has one level of questions. It uses speech recognition to detect the caller’s response.

Question: Thank you for calling Human Resources. If you would like to speak to Payroll say ‘payroll’. Otherwise, say ‘HR’.

  • Option 1 is selected. The caller is routed to the payroll group.
  • Option 2 is selected. The caller is routed to the human resources group.

The following figure shows the resulting call flow.

One-Level Interactive Call Flow

IVR with Two Levels of Questions

The following example shows an IVR that has two levels of questions. It allows callers to respond using either speech or DTMF keypad input.

Question: Thank you for calling the IT Help Desk. If you have a network access problem, press or say 1. If you have a software problem, press or say 2. If you have a hardware problem, press or say 3.

  • Option 1 is selected. The caller is routed to the network support team.
  • Option 2 is selected. The caller is asked a follow-up question.
    Question: If this is an operating system problem, press or say 1. If this is a problem with an internal application, press or say 2. Otherwise, press or say 3.
    • Option 1 is selected. The caller is routed to the operating systems support team.
    • Option 2 is selected. The caller is routed to the internal applications support team.
    • Option 3 is selected. The caller is routed to the software support team.
  • Option 3 is selected. The caller is asked a follow-up question.
    Question: If this is a printer problem press 1. Otherwise, press 2.
    • Option 1 is selected. The caller is routed to the printer support team.
    • Option 2 is selected. The caller is routed to the hardware support team.

The following figure shows the resulting call flow.

Two-Level Interactive Call Flow

See Also

Tasks

Creating a One-Level Interactive Workflow
Creating a Two-Level Interactive Workflow