THE NETHERLANDS 
Let us know what is Interactive Voice Response (IVR). No matter how skilled your staffs are, there’s a limit to how many Parents,students, enquiry Customers and Visitors they can attend to at once. Some visitors will have to wait a while for their calls to be answered—if they get answered at all. From a customer’s perspective, no one wants to be on hold for a long time.
As your institution grows, you’ll need effective systems in place to handle high call volumes in a timely manner. That’s where an interactive voice response (IVR) comes in. In some cases, a simple implementation of an IVR is also called a phone tree.
What is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ?
IVR is the integrated voice recognizer, using which the parents and students can get various information of the institution by calling an IVR number. This will help the parents with limited access to internet or ERP system to gather information and get connected to our ERP system by just calling a simple IVR number.
It serves as a bridge between people and computer databases by connecting the telephone network with the database. The telephone user can access the information from anywhere at anytime simply by dialing a specified number and following an on-line instruction when a connection has been established. The IVR system uses
pre-recorded or computer generated voice responses to provide information in response to an input from a telephone caller. The input may be given by means of touch-tone or Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) signal, which is generated when a caller presses a key of his/her telephone set, and the sequence of messages to be played is determined dynamically according to an internal menu structure (maintained within the IVR application program) and the user input.
Features Of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) :
1. Simple to use Graphical System Design Interface
2. Multiple telephone line support both on Analog and Digital
3. Advanced call screening and call switching options
4. Can be integrated with any type of database. Playback data retrieved from Database
5. Text to Speech
6. Call Transfer to other extensions, optionally announcing the Caller ID, allowing the recipient to accept or decline the call
7. Full logging of callers’ details and all the selections made during the call
8. Multi-Language support (English /Hindi)
9. DNIS: (Dialed number identification service)
10. ANI: (Automatic Number Identification)
11. Common IVR applications include: Schools, Colleges and Educational Institutions
IVR For An Educational Institution :
The software first converts the data into a voice format and then sends it on to the telephony network.
The voice response by the system is then heard by the caller, and as discussed, shall cover the following
informational requirements:
1. Fees Installment Paid/Due Status of the Student.
2. Attendance status for any day, week, month or entire year.
3. Marks scored in any test or exam.
4. Rank in any test or exam.
5. Percentage scored in exam.
6. Score, rank and percentage in any particular subject.
7. Homework for any day.
8. Remarks given by teachers.
9. Timetable.
10. Test schedule and test syllabus.
11. Dates of admission, pre-requisites for admission and status of admission for any application.
12. Vacancies for faculty, if any.
13. Any important announcements for parents like dates for parents-teachers meetings or any other messages.
14. Automatic Fee Reminders on student telephone numbers.
15. Voice mail accounts for each and every student (especially in case of a boarding school), to help parents leave important messages for their wards.
Benefit Of IVR In School Management System :
Benefits for Management –
- 1) Through IVR the institute helps the parents to access information 24/7, thus making it a 24/7 support system for parents.
- 2) Daily telephonic queries to the institution will reduce enormously, thus will save lots of time and money.
- 3) The management team will receive detailed module wise report of all the calls received, thus can analyze and understand the requirement of the parents.
- 4) For admission module IVR can also be used to analyze the quality of queries received along with the mobile number of the caller which can be used for institution promotions.
- 5) Important calls can be recorded automatically.
- 6) Reducing the communication gap between the parents and management team by providing the quality information.
- 7) Most of the parents will have knowledge to access IVR system using their mobile phones to get connected to the ERP even if they do not have computer, internet or ERP knowledge.
- 8) Along with the cloud based ERP system now we are providing cloud telephony services.
- 9) Can also be used as outgoing reminder call to parents for reminders like Fee due or important dates.
- 10) Can use multiple channels for consecutive calls.
- 11) Schools can use promotional voice message during waiting time.
- 12) Will get reports of number of calls dropped or average waiting time if any. Module wise priorities can be configured like parents calling for admission module will have highest priority as caller with minimum waiting time.
Benefits for Parents –
- 1) Easiest way to receive information.
- 2) Usually schools manage one support number, thus most of the time the number goes busy increasing the waiting time. Using IVR multiple calls can be managed easily.
- 3) Multi language can be used though currently we are using English.
- 4) Getting a 24/7 support system from institution for information.
