Interactive Voice Broadcasting (IVB). What Is It and How Can This Service Help Your Business?

Routine operator work associated with repeating the same message over and over again is neither efficient in terms of time and outcomes, nor financially viable in terms of costs and profit. To simplify the achievement of set tasks, expand the customer base, reduce the time wasted by operators and delegate some routine work to the machine, try out the IPTel’s IVB service.

What is Interactive Voice Broadcasting (IVB)?

Automatic Voice Broadcasting is transmitting a standard voice or text message via a multi-channel line to multiple customers simultaneously. This is done automatically without the involvement of staff by following a pre-set scenario.

IPtel offers a voice broadcasting service using messages recorded by a professional broadcaster. You can also expand your recording by converting your text into audio using Text-to-Speech technology. In this case, the system generates the entire text or its part based on the lead’s card (name, information the balance, event date, address, etc.). Compared to sending text information via SMS to a mobile number, customers are more favorably disposed to voice broadcasting. What is more, such a message provides more info for analytic purposes (call completion, listen-in time, hanging up) allowing for improved performance.

IPtel service offers several options for automatic broadcasting:

1. Operator-less voice broadcasting.
2. Voice message transmission with subsequent tone input.
3. Voice broadcasting with the possibility of connecting an operator.

Peculiarities of using scenarios

Every scenario is generated based on the company needs in the recipient’s response to the message. The first type is used for:

• informing customers, partners or staff of the time and venue of the scheduled event;
• direct marketing and company advertising;
• reminding of service expiration and the need to extend it;
• notifying debtors of the amount owed;
• emergency notification of staff at high-risk enterprises;
• informing about technical failures within the system or scheduled maintenance;
• sending thanks for completed actions;
• holiday greetings, etc.

When broadcasting is used to collect recipient data, the second type is used – broadcasting with subsequent tone input (upon hearing the signal, a recipient presses the digit indicating his or her response to the message). This method can be used to:

• identify loyal customers ready to make another purchase or recommend your company;
• communicate news, promotions and offers;
• notify of changes to the terms of service;
• make cold calls to update your contact list and select recipients ready for cooperation;
• analyze company performance (a customer rates an event using a scale), and so on.

Forwarding a call to an operator can be justified only if the information requires additional clarification. If this is the case, the customer may need to:

• clarify product parameters (availability, size, color, form, and so on);
• order the product with customizable configurations;
• select the event time (relevant for organizations delivering services), etc.

How does it work?

The telephone voice broadcasting system functions just like the automatic dialer, with the only difference being that the dialer system plays an audio file instead of connecting the recipient with the operator.

To configure the service, the manager uploads a contact list from the customer database and sets the dialing sequence, the number of calls per one recipient and a time frame for dialing. On top of that, when making international calls, the system synchronizes dialing start times by matching the country code in the phone number with time zones. This way, the recipient will get a message at a convenient time.

The next step involves launching one of the following scenarios:

1. Playing a voice file.
2. Playing an audio file and/or launching the text-to-speech (TTS) feature.
3. Playing a file – a recipient uses tone input.
4. Recording – tone input – forwarding to the operator.

Regardless of the scenario, dialing results are recorded into the system and may be downloaded at any time for analysis and subsequent customer relations.

Audio file for any message is recorded in the studio based on the customer-provided text. When recording the message, we take into account the customer’s preferences as to the broadcaster’s voice pitch, tone and pace.

The time factor is the main criterion applicable when choosing between the broadcaster’s message and leveraging Text-to-Speech technology. Voice recording makes sense for tasks that are relevant for a long time. TTS is better suitable for dynamically changing data, like payment amounts, account balances or personalized messages. Its main advantage is that the lead may listen to all relevant information that the company has without the need to involve staff or commit time for text recording by the broadcaster. In addition, this lets the customer learn all the required information round the clock without contacting the operator.

How can this service help your business?

Advantages of the automatic voice broadcasting are obvious:

1. Saving time. The Voice broadcasting system utilizes a multi-channel line, which allows dialing lots of recipients at once.
2. Financial benefits – no need to hire many employees to do the same job.
3. Instead, you can use your operators more productively by only assigning them tasks that require employee’s personal communication with the customer.
4. Playing the same audio file for multiple recipients guarantees that there is no space for human factor influence on the process of communicating information to customers.
5. Continuous monitoring of the broadcasting system and reports on any stage of the task, rather than one report once the task for an uploaded list is completed.
6. Flexible configuration of the dialing list, which allows setting call priority.
7. Customized messages using the text-to-speech feature based on data from the customer’s card.
8. Launching different scenarios depending on the call results (answer/no answer/hung up/cut off, and so on).
9. Prompt connection with the operator, if needed.
10. Setting 24/7 broadcasting while not prolonging the working hours for company staff.

The automatic broadcasting service may be of interest not just to commercial organizations, but also to government agencies providing services to the population and concerned about their reputation.