AI IVR: The Next Level of Phone Call Generation & Distribution

Having an IVR system is a must for call-reliant businesses that want to scale and gain control over call traffic flows. Whether you’re an affiliate, advertiser, or affiliate network, even a standard IVR can make a huge difference in your lead generation and acquisition campaigns, including solving simpler calls on the spot and eliminating call queues.

Now, with advancements in AI, IVR systems can do even more, from supporting industry-specific conversations in a human-like manner to transferring calls to a matching business to presenting fraud, all in one package.

An AI IVR can factor in the caller’s sentiment, interaction history, and dozens of other data points to provide the optimal journey for the caller. In practice, this means maximizing your profits by focusing on calls, campaigns, and partners that deliver.

Book a demo with Phonexa experts to learn more about our AI IVR and AI Call Agents.

Is It Worth Transitioning from a Standard IVR to an AI IVR?

As I’ve mentioned from the very beginning, even a standard IVR is a great starting point for businesses looking to scale call processing to hundreds or thousands of calls daily while improving caller experience and handling simpler calls without involving human operators.

AI IVR systems like the one we’re providing at Phonexa extend those benefits. Not only can you minimize call queues, take pressure off your call center, and create brand-on voices, but you can also qualify callers more accurately, whether they end up talking to your sales rep or an external buyer.

Read also: Call Intelligence to Get the Most out of Your Business Phone Calls

Self-learning AI algorithms are continuously improving as you process more calls, zeroing in on the best ways to handle and route specific callers. And you’re getting ironclad fraud protection because AI can analyze the caller’s intent based on the keywords, speech patterns, and other data items that are impossible to recognize and interpret on the fly by a human operator.

Standard IVR vs. AI IVR

	Standard IVR	AI IVR
Core Technology	Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals and basic speech recognition	Natural language processing, speech-to-text, and conversational AI IVR
Conversation Flow	Pre-determined static scripts	Contextualized, with possible pre-set boundaries
Routing Accuracy	Medium	High
Analytics	Broad range of non-conversation data	Broad range of non-conversation and conversation data (intent, sentiment, speech patterns, etc.)
Integration	Compatible with CRM and lead management systems	Compatible with CRM and lead management systems
Scalability	Unlimited by the number of concurrent calls & limited by the type of conversations	Unlimited by the number of concurrent calls & unlimited by the type of conversations

Important: As a Phonexa client, you get access to our AI IVR, including AI Call Agents that you can integrate as a block when configuring your IVR system. Then you can create custom conversation flows and use multi-level call distribution to connect the right caller to the right internal or external department and operator, while transferring essential data in real time. As a result, you get more conversions, higher caller satisfaction, and increased ROI.

How Phonexa’s AI-Backed IVR Grows ROI on Call Campaigns

With Phonexa, you can add AI Call Agents as modular blocks within your drag-and-drop IVR builder to turn your standard IVR into an AI-driven IVR without any third-party integrations or code refactoring.

Here’s what it looks like:

Once your IVR is set up, you get all sorts of advantages, from accurate call qualification to robust fraud prevention to real-time voice synthesis. With virtually no limit on concurrent inbound phone calls, Phonexa’s AI IVR becomes your most powerful leadgen tool.

And then, with iClear, you can add an extra safety layer on top by checking the caller’s IP address, phone number, email address, and other data against internal and external databases, all done in real-time before you’ve purchased the call.

Buyers who provide on-site services, such as home renovations or solar panel installations, find iClear especially valuable. They can verify the caller’s location against the IP-derived location or the location they’ve put on a form and reject the lead if there’s a mismatch.

Take a product tour to explore Phonexa’s phone call and lead management dashboard.

Ping Post Calls 2.0 for Maximum Flexibility & Transparency in Phone Call Markets

Ping Post Calls 2.0 – part of Phonexa’s comprehensive call management product, Call Logic – might be the best software to set up a lead market, supporting five call flows:

Data collected by IVR	Pre-qualifying callers with an AI IVR system is a standard call flow for both competitive and direct phone call markets, allowing you to route every call to an optimized path for affiliates and buyers.With Phonexa’s AI IVR, you can uncover general and industry-specific insights into callers and decide which of these insights you’d like to share with the buyers on the other end.
Data pinged before the call with the caller’s phone number	Sharing the caller’s phone number before the call is bought makes it easier for the buyer to identify whether they are interested in purchasing the call. There’s a certain risk of lead poaching, though, so you must ensure you’ve got reputable buyers in your network.
Data pinged before the call without the caller’s phone number	Sending the caller’s data while withholding the phone number is a smart strategy to protect affiliates from not being paid for their calls, while also preserving the caller’s privacy. Then the end buyer receives the caller’s phone number and other contact data.
Call with applications and no bidding	Connecting pre-qualified calls to specific buyers is a simple and effective strategy that doubles down on predictability in both types of callers who go to particular advertisers and revenue.
Pinging based on agent availability	Routing leads to the best available agents immediately, helps avoid call queues, and maximizes conversions, potentially at the expense of distribution accuracy.

While there’s no single best call routing strategy, Ping Post Calls 2.0 allows you to use all five strategies at the same time for different campaigns, so you can create a well-balanced market while also connecting callers to advertisers directly without the competition. With Ping Post Calls 2.0, everyone gets what they want, a unique strength of our tech.

Ping Post Calls 2.0 for Affiliates, Advertisers, and Affiliate Networks

Affiliates	With Ping Post Calls 2.0, affiliates can bid on the best call data attribution in the marketplace, increasing acceptance and sales rates. No matter the type of leads or market conditions, you can always identify optimal phone call monetization opportunities while ensuring all your callers are happy with the service and that advertisers are satisfied with the callers they bought.
Advertisers	With Ping Post Calls 2.0, advertisers know exactly who they’re buying – almost always purchase-ready leads one step away from placing an order. As a buyer, you can set up any qualification criteria for the leads you’d like to be offered, from demographics to firmographics. And then you can build on top of that, adding an extra layer of protection with iClear.
Affiliate Networks	With Ping Post Calls 2.0, affiliate networks can optimize call generation and acquisition strategies for buyers and sellers, making every deal a win-win while providing unmatched transparency into the process and a reasonable level of control for both parties.

How To Safely Expand into New Markets with Phonexa [Zero-Cost Strategy]

At Phonexa, we’ve addressed one of the major bottlenecks that prevent companies from expanding into new markets and audiences – the fear of failure. With our proprietary predictive modeling technology, you can now simulate any number of campaigns with any variables, including pay-per-call campaigns across advertising platforms, audiences, and creative assets.

Read also: Predictive Call Analytics: Unlock Data for Better Business Decisions

Predictive modeling costs next to nothing, so you can run hundreds of simulations to target different audiences at different locations or with different ad display timings until the perfect set of conditions is found – the one you’re going to implement in the real market with less risk.

 

Your Tracking & Distribution Platform for Calls, Leads, Fraud & Compliance

AI IVR can scale it up for your business and unlock insights into callers that would otherwise be unreachable. Still, it can be even more effective when used with lead management software and campaign-specific tools, such as E-Delivery for email campaigns or Lynx for affiliate marketing campaigns.

“Put everything in one place – that’s what we tried to do. Phonexa is about tracking everything – the call outcomes, the source of the calls, the route that the call went through, which publisher it comes from, which IVR model it goes through, which buyer bought the lead, and what happened next – and then reporting on everything to the point where you can then analyze it in real-time.”– David Pickard, CEO, Phonexa, during the Pioneering Pay-Per-Call Excellence webinar

Phonexa covers it all within a single ecosystem, so you don’t need to juggle between solutions and reports in an attempt to streamline your call and lead management or performance optimization. Instead, you have all essential data consolidated in a single dashboard that provides a bird’s-eye view of your campaigns and lets you dig deeper when needed.

 

Here are the two core products you get at a single price:

And the six add-ons you get as a Phonexa client:

Get started now to grow your phone call revenue streams with in-depth caller insights.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is AI IVR?

Unlike traditional IVR, which only guides conversations with pre-scripted responses – like dial 1 for A, dial 2 for B – an AI IVR system speaks to a caller just like a human operator would. Among other things, AI IVR can be trained on industry-specific data sets to ensure the most accurate responses and smooth conversation flows.

What conversational AI software does AI-based IVR use?

AI-based IVR systems use automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, text-to-speech, and other technologies to deliver a human-level experience for callers, ensure accurate call distribution, and achieve the highest possible call resolution rates for calls that can be handled by IVR alone.

Phonexa’s AI-backed IVR system also uses AI Call Agents that mimic human agents, guiding conversations based on context, the data collected from the caller, and the underlying business logic. For example, when it comes to call distribution, you can factor in the data collected by Phonexa’s AI IVR to maximize the revenue from the calls going through your system.

How much does IVR AI cost?

As a Phonexa client, you get access to AI IVR as part of an enterprise-grade tracking and distribution platform for calls, leads, fraud, and compliance. Then, if you need additional checks – for example, address or phone number verification, or any other checks with iClear – you can add them to your call processing logic.