What is Interactive Voice Response?

An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system helps to make information residing on your mainframe computers available to your customers and employees. They can retrieve or update this information using either their touchtone telephone or by voice commands using word recognition. An IVR system not only provides service to your customers in the middle of the night, when utility personel are not available, but it also provides an increased level of service during normal working hours.

Applications for IVR include:

• Electric Outage Restoration
• Customer Call Backs After Outage Restoration
• Automatic Call Notification of Planned Outages
• Customer Account Balance Inquiry
• Customer Account Payment Extension
• Customer Meter Reading
• Employee Benefits Registration

A growing number of customers are realizing that using a well designed IVR system is not only a more accurate way to do business, but it actually saves them time.

This IVR technology can help electric utilities become more competitive and offer a higher level of customer service in a cost effective manner. This is because an Interactive Voice Response system:

• Answers the call on the first ring
• Answers all calls in a consistent and controlled manner
• Is available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year
• Never calls in sick
• Receives no benefits (of course, neither do I)
• Can take a significant part of the call load from your staff, freeing them for other duties

To help you gain some understanding of what an Interactive Voice Response system can do for your Electic Utility you can read either a general description or a more technical description of an electric outage restoration system that I installed and programmed.