Interactive Voice Response (IVR) / Voice Response Unit (VRU)

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Voice Response Unit (VRU) is an automated telephony system that allows callers to access or hear information from a database of pre-recorded messages.

Clients are able to control the information received by their callers and can allow messages to be heard and transactions to be processed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With an IVR system, callers can interact with instructional menus and voice prompts to perform a variety of automated tasks, including data retrieval, payments by phone, or requests for documents. Users may store, retrieve, and route messages by using a touch-tone telephone, or if using a rotary phone, calls may be routed appropriately to a specific message or customer service representative. Responses may be recognized by the IVR system through telephone keypad input or voice recognition capabilities.

When using the telephone keypad, Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) is used to assign a tone or specific frequency to each digit on a telephone keypad so that it can be identified by a microprocessor.

The caller-to-database interface of an IVR application involves the implementation of specific software and hardware which are integrated with a customer's telecommunications system.