Industry expert perspectives on the changing role of IVRs with the adoption of smartphones.

1. December 2014
Given that calls still account for most customer care interactions, how will the role of
IVR evolve over the next year since most calls will be made from smartphones?
Eric Burton, Group Vice President, Care Shared Services, Time Warner Cable
I don't think the real question is how the role of the IVR will change, but rather how will the role of your mobile
app change. Customers increasingly expect to be able to do exactly what they do through your IVR via
Mobile. Furthermore, the customer will expect the agent on the other end to be able to interact via a variety
of channels - voice, chat, virtual agent, or video chat. The The voice IVR will remain an important option for
now, but the Mobile platform is far superior for providing self help, and the companies that figure out how to
draw more traffic there first will set the standard for others to follow.
Alan Paggao, Online Marketing Manager, Sears Home Services
With technology rapidly advancing, we need to keep up with how customers want to interact with companies.
Three years ago, cell phones constituted only five percent of traffic but now we are seeing rates at about
30%. With customers using multiple channels, we have an opportunity to create the best channel of
communication. We have the ability to facilitate the overflowing phone calls through the IVR with chat to
convert and close additional sales.
William Meisel, President, TMA Associates
Personal-assistant style interactions on smartphones are encouraging customers to interact with virtual
agents by voice—and to like it! An IVR system can be perceived as such an assistant by simply giving it a
name and personality. The call center may even be able to get some support from the marketing department
to develop interactive content and branding that engages customers rather than trying to get them to hang up
as soon as possible!
Dan Miller, Senior Analyst, Opus Research, Inc.
The IVR is becoming the friendly automated gatekeeper and triage specialist for digital natives when they
choose to call. It is already augmented by CRM systems, knowledge bases and analytical resources to make
rapid identification of the caller, automated resolution of his or her problems and intelligent call routing of the
call mundane. Next up is interoperation with smartphones, whose screens provide ubiquitous access to
visual info and support touch-based navigation.
Daniel Hong, Senior Director of Marketing, [24]7
For over 30 years the IVR has been used primarily in the enterprise for call routing and call deflection;
however, as we roll out the tape over the next year and beyond – IVR will have more of a digital DNA as
companies create linkages for experiences that span multiple channels. Tighter integration between IVR and
mobile apps, chat, SMS and visual experiences that render multimodal interactions will become more
common. IVR will begin transforming from interactive voice response to interactive multimedia response.
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Industry experts share their point of view
on the world of Customer Experience