IVR: Hosted IVR

Rediscover Your Customer…Go Beyond Their Expectations!

Qwest’s network and application services can help you rediscover your customer and go beyond their expectations. Qwest Contact Center Solutions® offers Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services that can help you communicate more effectively with your customer based on the various available channels of access into your business.

With Hosted IVR, we can do this independent of voice transport, data channel or self-service model. We support you with experience and knowledge of how to optimize these communication channels by minimizing risk, improving performance, managing growth and change, and keeping your business continuity regardless of disaster or change in your business economic model.

Understanding Your Customers

As customer touch-points increase, keeping a consistent and coordinated customer experience becomes more and more challenging. With Hosted IVR services, Qwest and our business partners can help you evaluate who your customers are and what they expect so that you can create a customer experience that goes beyond your customer’s expectations. We can provide you with an integrated solution that lets customers interact with you the way that is most comfortable for them and economical for you.

Implementing Your Strategy

Qwest can provide network services such as Internet access and toll-free and local services to enable multiple customer communication options.

Qwest’s Contact Center Solutions suite provides Hosted Interactive Voice Response services to increase your customer’s ability to self-service. Qwest’s Hosted IVR enables any combination of touch-tone and speech recognition application capabilities to match your customer’s preferences.

Many customers want to communicate with your business 24/7. Qwest understands this and the need for disaster recovery capabilities to ensure that expectation is met.

Hosted IVR Features

• Network carrier options:
  • Toll-free services from Qwest, AT&T® Sprint® and Verizon®.
  • Local access from regional carriers.
• Caller interface options:
  • Touch-tone.
  • Speech recognition utilizing the Nuance Communications product suite.
  • Multi-lingual: American English, American Spanish, Canadian French with other languages available upon request.
• System integration:
  • Industry standard databases and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
  • Intelligent call routing and queuing. CTI with Cisco®, Genesys®, Avaya®, and Nortel®.
• Application development:
  • Custom development access to VXML 2.x development interface and a development portal.
  • Quick deployment of Qwest’s ready-to-use applications for self-help applications such as store locators, financial status, account updates and PIN resets.
  • Text-to-speech application supports caller requests that require routine answers—like questions about account numbers, addresses and status of orders.
• Recording:
  • Record every call, a percentage of calls, specific VoiceXML dialogs, as well as transfers to agent conversations.
  • Simple VoiceXML application code enables recording for any call, at any point and for how long.
• Reporting:
  • Web-accessible, customizable reports provide in-depth transaction detail.
• Flexibility:
  • Utilize the capabilities of Qwest Hosted IVR, independent of carrier. Any of the leading carriers’ 8XX services or local lines can be used to connect callers to Hosted IVR applications.
  • Host the application in Qwest’s hosting centers, in your location, or at a hosting center of your choice. Use your existing server infrastructure or rely on Qwest’s hosting services.
  • Qwest or a Qwest partner can develop the applications or you can use your own development team.
  • Purchase Qwest Hosted IVR based on the number of ports or minutes of use you need to reflect changes in seasonal calling patterns.
  • Eliminate costly capital expenditures required to augment your network in order to satisfy seasonal peaks and valleys. Qwest Hosted IVR can increase access capacity based on call volume.

Managing Your Business

Qwest takes the complexity out of managing the underlying technology structure of your contact center, including the customer access media, the telephone network, and the hardware and application layers, letting you focus on managing the service quality standards and customer experience. Qwest applies the knowledge garnered from over 100 years of managing our carrier class infrastructure and the proven technology elements of the Genesys GVP and "Frameworks" Hosted Contact Center Platform. Your focus can be placed on optimizing the balance between complex agent handled applications and simpler customer self-service, thus optimizing contact center personnel and ensuring premier customer choice and experience.

Qwest provides tools to help you understand your customer’s experience. Historically, knowing IVR call volumes and call peaks was acceptable. However, this data alone does not provide insight into transaction trending by application, nor does it provide insight into caller behavior and experience. Managers within the customer service, marketing, finance, and IT departments are interested in evaluating the success of their IVR self-service applications. Qwest recognizes this need and has created a network-hosted IVR reporting application as a feature of its network-hosted IVR product. Qwest’s reporting will help you monitor and track your customer interaction flows to enable you to proactively update your strategy as your customer needs change.

Simplify with Hosted IVR

• Eliminate the hassle of managing premises-based equipment.
• Eliminate the need to manage multiple vendors.
• Eliminate the need to purchase additional equipment to accommodate seasonal call volume peaks and valleys.

Improve the Customer Experience

• Eliminate the need for customers to repeat themselves by integrating data captured during the call with other applications, agent desktop application and automatic call distribution (ACD).
• Eliminate the need for customers to have to hold for an agent by allowing them to complete tasks via the self-service application.
• Eliminate ambiguity of the effectiveness of your hosted IVR by using Qwest’s enhanced reporting capabilities.

Be Nimble

• Eliminate long turn around time to add capacity or modify applications.
• Create applications with industry standard development tools to speed application deployment.
• Leverage investments in your Web portal to integrate applications across voice and data channels.

How Hosted IVR Works

The inbound call, either local or 8XX, is routed to the Qwest Hosted IVR platform. Based on the application design, the call is answered via touch-tone or speech-recognition menu. The information request is then routed, via secure network, to the appropriate Web application server for response to the request. If the caller needs to speak with a live agent, and the application uses the Qwest Hosted IVR computer telephony integration (CTI) interface (ACD connect), the call is then routed to the customer’s ACD.