By Matt Ervin, Co-Founder, Plum Voice
IVR solutions, as they grow more complex in their capabilities, are assuming a more prominent role in enterprises. Once merely a front line for
When selecting a professional services team to build your custom IVR application, there are a number of things look for to ensure the quality, reliability and performance of your IVR solution.
1. Vertically integrated. When choosing an IVR
2. VoiceXML platform
As VoiceXML adoption continues to grow in enterprises and carriers, certification assists customers in choosing from a wide variety of vendors and deployment options to solve their particular business needs The
3. Support for multiple speech
VoiceXML IVR systems should support outside resources such as speech recognition engines or text-to-speech engines in a modular manner. This is important, because as these technologies are upgraded, application functionality can be improved without modifying VoiceXML code.
4. Clear project management framework to guide each phase of the design, development and deployment process.
Stages of a custom application development project should include:
-Design Phase: Expect complete design specification to be written by your IVR vendor to define the application's functionality, behavior, caller/user interface, and XML-based application programming interface (API) for the database interface.
-Implementation Phase: Expect high-quality voice application development by our experienced IVR software engineers freeing you to focus onbusiness data while your IVR vendor focuses on the call flow.
-QA and Deployment: Expect a thorough and well-managed application test process that exercises your application end-to-end to ensure a smooth transition to production.
5. Support, maintenance and management Although often underestimated, support and maintenance will strongly affect the performance and reliability of your IVR application. Look for a vertically integrated IVR vendor that has a lengthy track record of proven customer satisfaction in the industry.
6. Deployment options: Seek a vendor that offers both on-site IVR and hosted IVR deployments. This will allow you choice in terms of equipment management. For those that prefer to manage their own telco connection or their own IVR servers, an on-site solution will be a better fit. For those that want to outsource all aspects of the their IVR solution, including telco connectivity, infrastructure and the IVR application, hosted IVR will be the right choice.
4. Clear project management framework to guide each phase of the design, development and deployment process.
Stages of a custom application development project should include:
-Design Phase: Expect complete design specification to be written by your IVR vendor to define the application's functionality, behavior, caller/user interface, and XML-based application programming interface (API) for the database interface.
-Implementation Phase: Expect high-quality voice application development by our experienced IVR software engineers freeing you to focus on
-QA and Deployment: Expect a thorough and well-managed application test process that exercises your application end-to-end to ensure a smooth transition to production.
5. Support, maintenance and management Although often underestimated, support and maintenance will strongly affect the performance and reliability of your IVR application. Look for a vertically integrated IVR vendor that has a lengthy track record of proven customer satisfaction in the industry.
6. Deployment options: Seek a vendor that offers both on-site IVR and hosted IVR deployments. This will allow you choice in terms of equipment management. For those that prefer to manage their own telco connection or their own IVR servers, an on-site solution will be a better fit. For those that want to outsource all aspects of the their IVR solution, including telco connectivity, infrastructure and the IVR application, hosted IVR will be the right choice.
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