Once a standard call automation solution, traditional IVR is now useful only in specific use cases, such as numeric data entry or simple information retrieval. The system struggles to handle complex tasks, such as tailoring caller journeys based on intent, and relies on outdated keypad navigation, resulting in an unsatisfactory experience for 61% of users.
However, the situation is changing with the introduction of conversational IVR – an AI-powered system that can do what its predecessor can’t.
Controlled by voice, conversational IVR creates human-like interactions, where it provides information, qualifies callers, and understands caller intent and sentiment to personalize journeys and connect human agents when necessary.
Read on to explore the other conversational IVR benefits and learn how to bring them into your customer experience strategy.
Conversational IVR is an automated phone system that leverages NLP to understand and respond to human speech, enabling natural, back-and-forth dialogues. The system is more often applied for inbound calls.
Here’s how conversational IVR works for insurance providers:
Caller qualification data acquired during the conversation is immediately synced with your CRM or LMS databases, so that if a call agent needs to step in, they can personalize their approach from the outset.
Traditional IVR feels rigid and slow because it forces you to navigate frustrating menus to reach your destination. Worse, you aren’t even sure that you can reach it in the first place.
Combine it with a lack of personalization – a feature that 67% of customers expect – and you risk providing a poor customer experience and lowering satisfaction rates.
Source: PwC
Yet, despite the flaws, the default IVR can still be useful. For example, it allows for convenient number entry, which is undeniably much easier with buttons than with voice.
That’s why Phonexa integrated AI Call Agents into IVR to combine the best of both worlds, giving you the flexibility to design your caller journeys with keypad and voice commands.
Learn more about our AI Call Agents here:
Book a demo and see how Phonexa’s IVR and AI Call Agents can elevate your call campaigns.
A properly configured IVR software allows you to handle some calls without engaging any human resources. As for calls that require human intervention, they get shorter because – thanks to IVR-gathered qualification data – your employees begin conversations from the right context.
If your audience is multilingual, you can enhance communication with your brand by introducing conversational IVR. NLP enables it to recognize many languages and localize responses – a great way to make callers feel appreciated and boost conversion.
With AI integration, IVR can understand caller intent and adapt journeys in real time. For example, if a caller asks for solar installation pricing, the system provides the information and continues the conversation in context without reverting to the initial menu.
Much like other AI-driven solutions, conversational IVR is in a state of constant refinement, with conversations serving as a training ground. The system improves with each call, qualifying calls more accurately and leading to higher customer satisfaction.
The information gathered by conversational IVR can affect user interactions beyond live-agent calls, which is pivotal for omnichannel strategies. For example, by learning that someone plans to purchase your product, you can send them a promotional email with a discount code to incentivize the purchase.
Here are some of the goals IVR systems can help you reach:
To develop effective caller journeys, you need to split your callers’ questions into these categories:
Important: This step requires call transcription or recording software, such as Phonexa’s Cloud PBX, to extract historical call data.
Book a free demo to learn how Phonexa can help you grow your business.
When setting up your IVR, ensure you start conversations with open-ended questions. For instance, a simple “How can I help you?” opener prompts callers to immediately articulate their intent, putting IVR in the right context.
Next, develop caller journeys that:
Just as important, you need the right algorithm for when the system can’t understand the caller. You either program IVR to clarify the request and/or create “escape hatches” that enable your call agents to intervene before the opportunity is lost.
For this step, you should gather samples of customers’ expressions from surveys, live calls, or chat to train your IVR’s natural language understanding (UNL) engine. Basically, the more information you provide, the smarter your IVR will be.
Also, include samples with diverse speech styles and accents to ensure the system performs at its best for all callers.
These are the primary ways to create responses for your conversational IVR:
| Method | Description | Best for |
| Professional voice recording | Record professional voice actors in studios to facilitate the best quality of audio. | Enterprises that need a unique image to stand out in the market |
| Text-to-speech (TTS) generation | Convert text into speech using AI voice platforms like Google or Amazon to create a clear yet generic voice agent. | Systems with lots of prompts and regularly updated information |
| In-house recording | Use a high-quality microphone to record the script with your or your employee’s voice. | Internal systems or small businesses that prioritize cost efficiency over a polished sound |
To ensure a consistent voice across pre-recorded and AI-generated lines, either use TTS for the entire script or create a custom neural voice, e.g., by training Google’s Custom Neural Voice (CNV) model.
Thanks to API technology, conversational IVR can exchange data with other systems, enabling time-saving automation and supporting omnichannel marketing.
Here’s just a minor part of the solutions you can plug your IVR into:
By the time conversational IVR is implemented in your business, you want to ensure it’s fully functional, which is impossible without extensive testing.
The testing should include:
Useful tip: Test IVR’s voice recognition under various conditions (music, wind, or background talking) to ensure it performs well in real-world situations.
Once IVR is operational, you may want to track its key performance indicators (KPIs), such as abandonment rate and customer satisfaction rate, as well as call recordings.
By analyzing them, you can identify frustrations in your caller journeys, eliminating them through A/B testing:
Pro tip: By testing one variable at a time, you surface the exact changes that drive results, helping you calibrate your marketing efforts.
Although this article focuses on how conversational IVR handles inbound calls, it’s also applicable to outbound calls for updates and notifications:
As for employee-facing IVR applications, the most common is resolving HR-level or administrative issues, like“How many paid holidays do I have left this year?” or “Where’s a field where I can change a client’s status?”
You can also apply conversational IVR to affiliate marketing, specifically pay-per-call campaigns.
In this process, conversational IVR is responsible for qualifying calls based on users’ attributes or the length of the conversation. For example, advertisers can pay for callers who stay on the line for more than a minute.
And then, when a lead is qualified, it needs to pass into a caller distribution system, which is available in Phonexa’s Call Logic – our core solution designed for call management:
When boosting your conversions with affiliate marketing, callers are just a part of the puzzle. To optimize your traffic pipeline, you also need to capitalize on web leads, which you can do with LMS Sync – our proprietary solution that provides full control over your lead distribution and management, including fraud prevention and compliance.
LMS Sync consolidates lead data into a single panel, where you can see where a lead came from, their intent, and other data points to guide your nurturing decisions.
Here’s how our Call Logic and LMS Sync solutions help real businesses:
Our core solutions come at a single price:
| LMS Sync | Lead management & distribution software |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & routing software |
Additional features come along and expand Phonexa’s core functionality:
What’s best, all our solutions work in sync, automatically transferring data between each other. It means that you don’t have to look for third-party software and then integrate it – everything is connected and ready to deliver upon initial configuration.
“We have eight products in one, and there is really no other platform out there for affiliate marketers and advertisers that has the robust capabilities in terms of the product suite that we offer up front. Not only can you do call tracking and distribution, but you can do lead tracking and distribution as well as traffic-based tracking across all your offers. It doesn’t matter how you’re working with other entities, you can track essentially any kind of customer interaction in our platform and be able to have closed-loop reporting on that interaction, especially when there are multiple entities involved.” – Talar Malakian, from Revolutionazing B2B Marketing podcast
Get started now, and grow your business with Phonexa’s performance marketing solutions.
IVR is an automated phone system that allows callers to reach their destinations with keypad navigation through decision trees. With AI integration, IVR can now recognize voice and provide AI-generated responses – an experience 66% of customers prefer.
Once you acquire IVR, you need to integrate it into your platform, configure the API, and set up prerequisites. From there, you’re all set to configure the IVR’s voice, create caller journeys, and test the system until it’s ready to launch.
No, it’s not. You can use cheaper alternatives, such as in-house recording or Google’s text-to-speech (TTS) service. Yet, for larger brands, it’s prudent to record professional voice actors for both scripted and AI-generated responses to build a unique, recognizable brand image.
Whether you’re buying phone calls, selling phone calls, or managing the phone call marketplace as…
It’s no secret that many affiliates are over-focused on content marketing, refining copy and visuals…
It’s no secret that phone calls are a great acquisition channel, with more than decent…
As a business that generates traffic through affiliate marketing, you strive to maximize the return…
I know it, you know it: nobody is willing to pay for mismatched leads, turning…
Accounting for billions of dollars in lost revenue, affiliate marketing fraud is something you want…