How improved are IVRs?

Nice (and long) ComputerWorld article on progress with TTS/VR based phone systems.

Improved technology makes it less likely that you'll get caught in 'touch-tone hell'

August 22, 2007 (Computerworld) -- "Touch 1 for sales, touch 2 for customer service, touch 3 for ... "

Such recorded greetings, inviting a response via the caller's touch-tone telephone keypad, are generated by interactive voice response (IVR) systems, which for two decades have been the principal communications interface between the public and corporate America, supporting self-service applications -- or at least reducing the workload on live call agents.

But these days, IVR systems are changing, leaving less and less likelihood of callers being trapped in "touch-tone hell." More corporations are switching to speech recognition so that callers are greeted by a voice that invites them to simply state their business. Reacting to the words they recognize, these systems route the calls accordingly.

Such an open-ended greeting is called a natural language system, explained Lynda Smith, division manager at Nuance Communications Inc. in Burlington, Mass., which makes the "speech engine" used in many IVRs. (Simpler, menu-structured speech interfaces are called "directed dialog" systems.)

Smith divides speech-based IVRs into four tiers. The lowest tier prompts the user to "press or say 1, and might have a "grammar" (the repertoire of words and phrases it can respond to) of 250 words. Tier 2 would be similar but with a grammar of up to 2,500 utterances. Tier 3 would add a natural language system, and Tier 4 would be capable of handling an open-ended grammar, such as would be needed for a directory look-up application. Prices range from $100,000 to $1 million, she added. Much More...