Auto Attendant

Employee Churn Drives Demand for Auto Attendant Capabilities
Employee churn - it costs money, brings down morale and hurts customer service. Are there tried and true methods for protecting the employee base? According to a recent General Social Survey, employees located in the United States with stock ownership in their company were four times less likely to be laid off during the Great Recession than those without stock ownership.

Handle Auto Attendant Features of IVR with Front Office Assistant
Android has another front office assistant app, cleverly named the Front Office Assistant. Consulting firm RIIS has announced the release of the app, which is intended to be a way for businesses to manage the auto attendant functions of their IVR system using an Android tablet, according to RIIS officials.

Why Does Your Auto Attendant Talk Like a Girl?
This reporter suspects there's quite the market for name-brand voices in the auto-attendant market -- Mel Gibson as William Wallace urging you to select one, two or three; Humphrey Bogart on a travel site would be particularly notable.

Automatic Call Distribution Helps Callers Avoid Auto Attendant 'Hell'
South Africa's Hannes van der Merwe, Mitel product manager at Itec, recently said what most customer service professionals consider gospel truth -- customers really, really despise being abandoned to IVR and auto attendant "hell." "Many customers become frustrated when they get a long list of menu options to choose from when they call in to the contact center, and find themselves bounced around between an IVR and agents who can't help them," van der Merwe said. "The process of getting to the right agent should be as fast, simple and seamless as possible for the customer."

Auto Attendant: Telovations Speech Assist Wins INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award
Telovations Speech Assist recently received the 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award from TMC. A cloud-based solution, Speech Assist brings important changes to business communications. Callers using the device just speak the name of the person who they want to speak with, and everyone's time is used more efficiently.

Don't Let Your Auto Attendant Script Confuse the Caller
As self-service and speech recognition capabilities are increasingly leveraged as tactics to effectively connect the customer, many businesses are beginning to realize that scripts aren't limited to the stage or big screen - they are a crucial part of the caller experience.

The On-Hold Aspect of Auto Attendants
We come across the saying "Mind the gap" when boarding planes and trains, but there's another type of gap that most individuals come across on a frequent basis. This "gap" we speak of is the time between when one dials an organization via telephone and finally gets in contact with their desired third-party on the other end of the line. Whether it's a doctor's office, retail company or insurance provider, most of us are put on hold before we reach a person or automated service that can help us with our inquiry.

How the Cloud Makes Speech-enabled Auto Attendants Affordable
A recent white paper from lyrix.com, entitled "Why Every Enterprise Needs a VoIP High Quality Speech Enabled Auto Attendant," does a good job demonstrating why, with growing bandwidth and the ubiquity of SIP, "it is finally feasible to deliver high quality speech applications from the cloud."

Unforeseen Circumstances Demand an Auto Attendant
How many situations in business are you able to perfectly predict? How many times does your business change directions and you have to be able to "go with the flow"? When uncontrolled events such as weather or natural disasters enter the mix, your operation can change in an instant. With an auto attendant in place, you can notify your employees and keep your customers up to speed.