[thelist] Computerized Automatic Phone Answering

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Thu Jun 11 15:18:39 CDT 2009


On 11 Jun 2009, at 18:01, Fred Jones wrote:

>> Call it "Interactive Voice Response systems" and then google 'IVR  
>> systems', 'IVR cost', 'small business IVR solutions', etc.
>>
>> I think Eduardo is right, I'm pretty sure an asterisk pbx will  
>> handle it but I'm not sure what they cost these days ... or how  
>> much telecom power your client really needs.  If they are on a  
>> smallish budget you might have them look into 'hosted pbx' or even  
>> 'hosted asterisk pbx' solutions.
>
> Excellent. This is indeed what I needed.


Just be careful though - expectations for what can be done through a  
phone UI are *incredibly* high, and many people are very, very unhappy  
about using 1st generation touch tone interaction (which ain't IVR  
btw). Yes, it's all possible, but doing it *well* isn't cheap, either  
in software, or in tuning, which is what can make the difference  
between a sweet, natural phone system and a very clunky one, even with  
the same SW.

Also, I would imagine that the client may doing this as a cost takeout  
exercise; customers don't like that kind of thing, especially if  
they're forced that way (rather than it being an extra service).

Cheers
Martin
(who does a bit of this in his day job, but at the higher end)

--
 > Spammers: Send me email -> yumyum at easyweb.co.uk to train my filter
 > http://dspam.nuclearelephant.com/








More information about the thelist mailing list