Contacting customers or prospective customers regarding time sensitive information can be a very important service. Just call it “proactive customer notification”.

In the past, outbound customer notifications have been handled by direct mail, billing inserts or direct phone calls by company staff. Perhaps the biggest challenge associated with direct phone call customer notification is that in many cases company staff members are diverted from their normal job duties to perform these tasks. This is especially true if you are a small to mid-sized business.

Diversion of these internal resources typically comes with these risks:

  • Loss of productivity in their normal job duties, and
  • Sometimes less than desired hoped for results due to lack of expertise in dealing directly with customers.

In a research report published by Report Buyer in June, 2008, they predicted that the hosted, outbound IVR notification market will increase from $213 million to $524 million by 2013. See Hosted Speech and Outbound IVR Services for more details.

Integration of traditional inbound IVR applications with outbound IVR applications is an increasing trend aimed at providing customers a more comprehensive suite of services. As smart phones, PDAs and intelligent tablet usage continues to increase, IVR integration with mobile applications is on the rise also.

So what types of hosted, outbound IVR applications exist?
Here is a short example list.

  • Delivery of Merchandise notifications – think retail orders or prescriptions being available as a good example
  • Appointment reminders by the medical industry and legal industry
  • Polling. A wide range of Q&A and research initiatives already exist for both political and consumer research
  • General announcements – school closings, crime prevention, senior citizen education, public service announcements, and more
  • Financial institutions use it for account information updates, pre-set “trigger” events such as minimal account balances or unusual account activities, changes in investment interest rate announcements, and more.

A universal reminder we always like to make is to clearly understand your targeted audience and your desired results. The more complex the application or message, or the more likely human decision making skills are required, the less likely you will receive the desired benefits from using outbound IVR applications.