This document summarizes CallFire's enterprise-level interactive voice response (IVR) solutions. CallFire offers scalable cloud-based IVR that can handle thousands of simultaneous calls. Their IVR solutions are flexible and can be customized for applications like surveys, call routing, and customer service. The document provides examples of how major companies have used CallFire's IVR for political campaigns, mutual fund voting, loyalty surveys, and logistics tracking. It emphasizes that CallFire's cloud-based IVR allows for rapid scaling, lower costs than traditional systems, and real-time reporting of call data.
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IVR Solutions at the Enterprise Level
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3. Hello, I’m Bill My name is Bill Hughes and I am a Sr. IVR Designer at CallFire. I wear several hats here at CallFire – I ’m available to answer questions on all of CallFire’s Enterprise Solutions, and will be part of the Professional Services Team helping to design the perfect IVR solution for your needs. You can reach me or any other of the members of the CallFire Solutions Team anytime by contacting [email_address] . Or call 877.897.FIRE
29. QUESTIONS? Additional video resources: Setting up an IVR DialPlan: http://www.callfire.com//media/tutorial/ivr/ Recorded IVR Instructional Tutorial: http://www.callfire.com/dialer/cm/info/webinar.html Thanks for taking part in today ’s webinar. You will receive an email from us – we’d like to extend our appreciation by offering you your choice from two of our favorite books on business practices and survey design.
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Hi. Welcome to CallFire ’s Webinar on IVR Solutions at the Enterprise Level Today we are going to discuss creating and deploying IVRs at the enterprise level using a cloud-based platform. Don ’t worry about the jargon – We will define terms, including IVR and Cloud-based, as we go along. But first, let ’s define “The Enterprise” – who is the audience for this webinar; what constitutes an “Enterprise-Level” client? Customer with complex requirements for Security Scalability Business Rules Large Customers Large Numbers of Calls per Month Next Slide
So, our agenda for the webinar. Clearly we are already in the welcome and introduction section. The first real item will cover “Why an IVR” – why would you want an automated system for you phone campaign – and “Why the Cloud” – why not buy a proprietary system for yourself. Then we ’ll look at four real-world examples of actual enterprise-level IVRs that CallFire has built and deployed for our clients. The demonstrate the power and flexibility of the CallFireXML platform: Looking at a political solution, we' ll see how CallFire’s ability to instantly ramp up to tens of thousands of calls can truly put a fire under a grassroots call campaign. Next we ’ll look at an inbound campaign that builds the IVR dynamically based upon the account information for the customer – in this case it will assemble the voting questions for an investment subscriber. We ’ll look at a Customer Service Satisfaction Survey for a major national retailer – this is also a dynamic IVR, but based on the interaction with the customer rather than known information. The fourth example represents a real-time reporting problem and CallFire ’s solution. Finally, we ’ll look at how to move forward with CallFire.
So, to start with introductions, I ’m Bill. I’m one of CallFire’s senior IVR designers. I would be just one member of the Professional Services Team that would assist you through the development and deployment of your CallFire IVR solution. We would usually also include a developer who can help with the coding necessary on your end (if the solution requires interacting with your servers and databases), and engineers who will work to ensure that call volumes and logistical requirements are met. You can reach me or any other member of our Professional Services Team by emailing us at [email_address] , or by calling 877-897-fire (877-897-3473). Once you are actually working with your Professional Services Team, you will have direct contact information for each member of the team.
CallFire has been in business for over seven years. In that time, we have consistently been one of the thought and innovation leaders in our field. CallFire has over 36,000 US customers – a number which is continually growing – including several very large, well-known enterprise clients. Our clients range from extremely large to very small political organizations, emergency responders large and small, churches and other community organizations, Telemarketing firms, several major insurance companies, national retail establishments. Our Professional Services Team is proficient at defining, understanding, and meeting the specialized needs of our Enterprise-level clients, and will work with you from beginning, to development, and all through deployment of your campaigns. CallFire has a proven, robust infrastructure capable of meeting the specialized needs of enterprise-level clients. Throughout our years in business, we have been a leader in our industry with a strong reputation for reliability.
So – what exactly IS an IVR? The acronym IVR actually stands for Interactive Voice Response . Generally, IVR has come to mean interactive touch-tone response. CallFireXML, our scripting language offers great flexibility in the types of things it can do: It can play pre-recorded sound files, or “read”text-to-speech entries to your customer. It can ask questions and get back responses. It can send those responses to a server and get back other information in response; it can “read” back information gathered from a database or external server; it can record audio data and send those recordings to a server; and it can transfer and route calls intelligently. In addition, CallFireXML can use if-else conditions to determine when, how or why to do something – transfer to one number during business hours, and another number after hours, for example; ask a question of a customer only if a certain condition is met, such as a “yes” answer to a previous question; route a call according to previous customer responses . This allows CallFire’s IVRs the flexibility to meet almost any conceivable requirement.
What, exactly is “The Cloud” “ The Cloud” – both as a term and as a concept – has been dominating the technical news for the past several years. I told you we’d de-mystify the jargon here. Basically, “The Cloud” just stands for “ It all happens somewhere out there. ” This actually means two things. The first is that the Processes – the things the program or software does – happen somewhere out on the Web. Or, more accurately, on servers out there belonging to the company offering the Cloud Platform. The second thing is that usually the data – the information you are uploading, or creating, or gathering – is also stored on those servers somewhere. Usually the data is not stored locally, meaning on your own computers. At Callfire, your data resides on your servers – as you ’ll see, we access only that data you want us to have. Only the processes reside on the cloud.
There are some very good economic reasons for using Cloud Solutions at the enterprise-level. The most obvious – and most important – is that there are no capital expenditures for hardware or software. No maintenance costs and no upgrade costs. Because they are available as a web offering, customers are always accessing the latest rolled-out iteration of the program. In most cases there is no local installation at all, or sometimes just a minor client component. This means that IT Departments don ’t have to worry about compatibility -- except ensuring that they are supporting the correct browsers and browser version numbers. If you have data uploaded to the Cloud, then your vendor generally maintains backups, including offsite archiving. There is no need to invest in expensive backup schemes, software, or hardware. And finally, the Cloud is instantly and infinitely scalable. Most Cloud applications use a pay-as-you-go pricing model, but even those that require a licensing or per-seat fee are geared toward rapidly and easily adding new users to your account.
I won ’t belabor the footnote references here, but almost all independent studies show steady growth in Cloud Computing offerings and usage. Microsoft is pushing the Office 365, the new Cloud version of MS Office designed for small businesses. Many companies large and small are abandoning MS Office software products for Google Apps. Apple is rolling out what it calls the iCloud. Clearly, hosted software solutions – the Cloud – are here to stay at some level. With the high purchase and maintenance costs of telephony equipment, c loud-based telephony is one of the areas that makes the most sense.
So now that we know we want a cloud-based solution, why use IVRs for your telephone call campaigns? IVRs are a versatile, economic solution providing scalability and flexibility. They are easy to create, easy to adapt to changing needs, and they free your staff for more important tasks. An IVR can perform the routine, mundane task of gathering data – your agents can perform the more important task of analyzing that data. They are scalable, flexible, and dynamic. As we will see, the IVR call, inbound or outbound, can create itself on the fly in response to customer input and information received from your database. In addition, CallFire offers the Dashboard, which acts as an executive-interface to monitor your campaigns through real-time. In addition, CallFire ’s extensive library of APIs offer additional flexibility – mail real-time data to your sales force; assemble a deliver your IVRs automatically. The possibilities are truthfully endless.
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Now we will look at four real-world examples of actual Enterprise –level IVRs CallFire has created and deployed.
Now we will look at four real-world examples of actual Enterprise –level IVRs CallFire has created and deployed.
The first is a political campaign. In this particular case, we have almost too many examples to choose from. We work with political groups from all areas of the spectrum, large and small, including some of the biggest and most-well known organizations. The political campaign is a perfect example of the scalability of the IVR product. Let ’s say that a political campaign starts with two people sitting around having some beer and pizza, and the most brilliant, obvious political idea occurs to them: the way to solve the country’s problems are to draft Homer Simpson as President!
Clearly the next stages are to gauge the response to this idea by conducting an initial straw-poll, and to move the grassroots organization forward by getting out the idea. Both can be conducted using the IVR Solution, and as the response grows, the system can automatically grow with the response, ramping up from just a few calls from your local area to millions of calls nationally. CallFire ’s political uses for the IVR range from polling, to informational outreach, candidate-awareness campaigns, Get Out The Vote campaigns, fundraising and volunteerism campaigns – essentially everything the campaign needs.
Now we will look at four real-world examples of actual Enterprise –level IVRs CallFire has created and deployed.
One of the most common questions we get regarding IVRs is, “All my customers are slightly different, with different questions which need to be asked of them. How can I design one IVR to take care of all of my customers?” The following two examples deal with the dynamic assembly of the actual IVR based on individual customer account data or customer input. A major firm involved in voting shares for mutual funds approached us with a unique requirement: every shareholder for a given fund needed to vote on issues or directors for that fund, and they had a constant flow of many funds needing voting. So the requirement was hundreds of votes, or calls, per day, each of them unique to a particular shareholders actual holdings.
The actual shareholder information was already sitting in the customer ’s database under the customer account number. Also on the customer server was the information on whatever propositions or director appointments needed to be voted for each fund. The investment company wanted to keep all sensitive information on their site for security reasons. The shareholder is mailed a vote information card with the specifics of that shareholder ’s votes. It also includes a Voter Reference Number and instructions to call in to the IVR. The Voter Reference Number replaces any need to send the Account Number , a more sensitive piece of data. The solution is for the IVR to ask for the Vote Reference Number and send that to the Investment Company’s servers.
A PHP script on that server takes the Reference Number and uses it to determine the votes according to the holdings on that account. The Investment Company returns an array containing the number of each type of vote and the reference names for the vote.
CallFire ’s IVR then dynamically assembles the vote questions based on the number of each type of vote, and read the Vote Reference Names to the shareholder. The shareholder votes and all votes are instantly sent back to the Investment Company’s servers to be tallied. No sensitive data ever leaves the Investment Company ’s servers, and the entire IVR is created dynamically by the interaction between the IVR script and the Investment Company’s database.
Now we will look at four real-world examples of actual Enterprise –level IVRs CallFire has created and deployed.
Another major enterprise client, IPSOS, conducts customer service satisfaction surveys for their clients one of whom is a major national retailer with multiple departments within the retail store. After visiting various departments within the store, the customer pays for their purchases and receives a receipt -- on the receipt is a request to call into a toll-free number and take a customer satisfaction survey.
One of the requirements for statistical validity was that the order of certain questions, and the order of the answers for questions, be randomized. Another requirement was that the customer only be asked questions that corresponded to the actual departments they visited. The IVR first asked a series of questions to determine the customer in-store experience, then CallFire randomized the questions and answers for statistical validity. An earlier, non-CallFire version of this survey ran to over 7,000 lines of code. CallFire was able to produce it in just over 1,000 lines of code and markedly increase the efficiency of the script. Currently the IPSOS survey is running up to a million calls per month, with a fully dynamic, randomized IVR.
Now we will look at four real-world examples of actual Enterprise –level IVRs CallFire has created and deployed.
The final Enterprise example involves an auto delivery company for Honda cars. The problem involved an issue of accountability. Once a drive delivers the cars to the dealership, they must remember to return the ramps on the truck to the driving position. Too often drivers were forgetting to lower their ramps and were crashing them into bridge overheads. The main issues of accountability were for the driver to acknowledge and take responsibility for returning their truck to driving condition, and to state that for legal verification purposes.
The current scenario is that the driver arrives at the dealership as scheduled and delivers his cars. After he has lowered all of his ramps, he calls into the United Road Service IVR. At that time he enters his driver code.. The IVR records his name., the fact that he has made his delivery, and his statement that he has returned his truck to drivable condition. The Callback API delivers these recordings immediately to United Road Services servers. From that moment, the driver, United Road Service, and the Insurance company are all covered for in the event of an accident, and the requirement of the driver to call in reminds him or her to ensure their truck is drivable. Accidents have dropped by more than 75%. Honda Motors in 2010 named the United Road Service IVR a Best Practice.
So, once again, CallFire Enterprise IVR delivers Scalability Individualization and personalization which doesn ’t compromise security Adaptability to customer response Time-stamped, instantly-available responses
The “How-To” for CallFire Enterprise IVRs is simple. Call into CallFire’s Solutions Team and schedule a meeting with our Professional Services Team. We will then set up a session to gather your customer requirements, take you through an individual webinar demonstration if you would like, and discuss the scope of your project. Depending on your needs, we would build your IVR, or we would help your developers build it. We would ensure that the IVR completely meets your requirements, and runs to specifications, before rolling it out.
To schedule an initial exploratory meeting with us, just email [email_address] with TMCNet in the subject line, or call 1-877-897-3473.
To hear the actual beginning of a straw poll for our candidate Homer Simpson, and see how it is created, go to this first link, www.callfire.com//media/tutorial.ivr/ To see a recoded version of our actual tutorial webinar, go to www.callfire.com/dialer/cm/info/webinar.html We appreciate your attending today. You will receive an email from us asking your preference of either of our favorite books on business practices and on survey design as a token of our thanks and appreciation.