Voice & IVR

Is there new life for the IVR in the cloud? You bet.

Some people are wary of moving their IVR to the cloud. But with so much to gain, it could be time for a fresh look.

Alexa—play my ‘Please don’t put me on hold again’ playlist

When they’re finally gone, will you miss those rickety, old-school IVRs? No, me neither.

Most traditional IVRs deliver a pretty underwhelming customer experience—and that needs to change. Gartner is predicting that, by 2023, customers will prefer to use speech interfaces to initiate 70% of self-service interactions. So your IVR better catch up with modern customer expectations fast.

Customers want easy self-service. And they want to interact using their voice, just like they do at home with all kinds of smart devices. That means injecting the IVR with some serious conversational AI tech that can deliver the natural, intelligent engagements customers want—interactions that feel like talking to a human.

And the quickest and most cost-effective way to turbocharge your IVR with the latest voice technology? It’s in the cloud.

Put simply, the cloud makes it much faster, easier, and more affordable to breathe new life into your IVR. Which explains why cloud IVR investments are set to grow 50% faster than their on-premises cousins through to 2023.

Stop managing systems, start innovating experiences

With on-demand access to limitless capacity in the cloud, there’s no need to worry about your IVR being overwhelmed during peak periods. And real-time monitoring by your cloud IVR vendor takes away the stress of ensuring your system is always available and secure.

But don’t think that no more management means no more oversight. The best vendors (like a certain company called Nuance—maybe you’ve heard of them?) will provide detailed reporting and analytics to help you assess performance and optimize customer engagements on every channel, not just the IVR. Breaking down the silos to connect the IVR to other channels gets a whole lot simpler in the cloud.

Get instant access to groundbreaking innovations

In the cloud, you can take advantage of every software update and every conversational AI innovation as soon as it’s released. No more tedious upgrade cycles or massive capital outlays—just a subscription to a service that continuously enhances and adds to its capabilities.

Deliver outrageously good customer service

Cloud-based services also make it much simpler to create an IVR that speaks with your brand voice, not a mismatched collection of audio files. Combined with advanced natural language understanding (NLU) technologies, it means your customers can have a conversation with your IVR that feels human. They can speak in their own words and get intelligent responses for faster issue resolution.

Add in some cloud-based voice biometrics, and authentication becomes effortless for customers, eliminating the need for passwords and PINs and creating a smooth IVR experience.

So, here’s my pitch. (You knew this was coming.)

Nuance Cloud IVR gives you all these benefits and more. It lets you offer your customers a truly conversational IVR experience where they’ll be able to speak naturally, have intelligent conversations, and be treated as individuals. Pay only for what you use each month, and we’ll take care of the rest.

We do all the development, deployment, hosting, management, and maintenance, while you enjoy the lower operational costs, greater flexibility, and faster time to market. Pay only for what you use each month, and refocus your energies on what matters most to your business.

Sound good? Check it out right here.