IVR Deconstructed

Just read a forum post from an IVR developer asking how to increase the volume for his IVR application. But the question I had for him was: do you mean to increase the volume of your TTS prompts or do you mean to increase the volume of your prerecorded audio?

To increase the volume of TTS prompts, you can use the <prosody> tag for IVR. You can set the volume attribute of the <prosody> tag to “Silent”, “Soft”, “Medium”, “Loud”, or “Default”. The volume attribute can also be set to an integer value such as “25.0″ or “100.0″. Additionally, the volume attribute can be set to a percentage such as “+25%” or “-25%”.

However, please keep in mind that when using the <prosody> tag for Realspeak TTS, the talking speed and volume of the TTS voice does not revert back to the normal speed after the  tag has been used. To revert it back to normal, you must use the <prosody> tag again with the attribute of “volume” set to “100.0″ and the attribute of “rate” set to “default”.

For prerecorded audio prompts, you would not be able to use the <prosody> tag for your IVR application. Instead, you would have to either:

1) Re-record the audio prompts so that they are louder.

OR

2) Use a tool such as SoX to increase the gain on the existing audio prompts. This site provides some tips on how you might do this.

Hope these suggestions help you IVR developers out there.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I had received an e-mail stating that “Boston Celtics Playoff Tickets will become available on April __, 2010″. However, as I get a lot of e-mail and junk e-mail, this reminder e-mail to purchase tickets got buried in my Inbox and I completely forgot about it. So, I thought to myself, IVR sure would’ve been useful here to remind me about buying playoff tickets.

Think about it: We all have cell phones. We carry them with us all the time. When we register on sports team websites for a sweepstakes contest to win tickets, usually they require a phone number.

If these sports team organizations used IVR to set up outbound phone calls to remind people who registered on their site to buy playoff tickets, then they would increase the number of people who purchased their tickets. They could set up an IVR message in the application that says:

“Hi there. Tickets go on sale on April __, 2010. You can purchase tickets either through our website, through our phone number, and through our ticket office. Goodbye!”

They could even set up a second outbound IVR call on the day of selling tickets with this same IVR message.

Just another random thought on how IVR can be used to improve our lives…

From this week’s episode on Lost, we saw Jin’s alternate timeline self having communication problems speaking English. When he’s confronted by the customs officer at the airport, it’s “Sorry, no English.” When he’s confronted by Keamy and thugs, it’s “Sorry, no English.”

So, how would IVR help Jin out here?

Earlier this week, I heard of a pen that will scan and translate text in another language. But why can’t we apply this to IVR as well?

There could be an IVR system that allows you to speak your language and would translate what you say to English. Kind of like a personal translator.

Even though we’re not there yet, it would be nice to have a device like this in the future for individuals who cannot speak a specific language.

Just another thought on how IVR can improve our lives…