|
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and DTMF tones input via keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interact with a company’s host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which they can service their own inquiries by following the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with prerecorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR applications can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple interactions. IVR systems deployed in the network are sized to handle large call volumes. It is common in industries that have recently entered the telecommunications industry to refer to an automated attendant as an IVR. The terms, however, are distinct and mean different things to traditional telecommunications professionals , whereas emerging telephony and VoIP professionals often use the term ''IVR'' as a catch-all to signify any kind of telephony menu, even a basic automated attendant. The term voice response unit (VRU), is sometimes used as well. == History == Research in speech technology predated the advent of digital computers. It began with a speech synthesis project at Bell Labs in 1936 that resulted in a device called "the Voder" which was demonstrated at the 1939 World's Fair. A link between speech and mathematics resulted in a breakthrough in the early 1970s. Leonard E. Baum, and Lloyd R. Welch, invented an approach to recognition based on a statistical concept called the Hidden Markov Model. In 1961, Bell System developed a new tone dialing methodology. Bell unveiled the first telephone that could dial area codes using DTMF technology at the Seattle World Fair in 1962. DTMF telephones enabled the use of in-band signaling, i.e., they transmit audible tones in the same 300 Hz to 3.4 kHz range occupied by the human voice. The blueprint for IVR was born. Despite the increase in deployment of IVR technology in the 1970s to automate tasks in call centers, the technology was still complex and expensive. Early voice response systems were DSP technology based, and were limited to small vocabularies. However, in the early 1980s a first mainstream market competitor emerged when Leon Ferber (Perception Technology) realized that hard drive technology (read/write random-access to digitized voice data) had finally reached a cost effective price point. A system could store digitized speech on disk, play the appropriate spoken message, and process the human's DTMF response. As call centers began to migrate to multimedia in the late 1990s, companies started to invest in computer telephony integration (CTI) with IVR systems. IVR became vital for call centers deploying universal queuing and routing solutions and acted as an agent which collected customer data to enable intelligent routing decisions. With improvements in technology, systems could use speaker-independent voice recognition of a limited vocabulary instead of requiring the person to use DTMF signaling. In the subsequent decade, voice response started to become more common and cheaper to deploy. This was due to increased CPU power and the migration of speech applications from proprietary code to the VXML standard. IVR technology is also being introduced into automobile systems for hands-free operation. Current deployment in automobiles revolves around satellite navigation, audio and mobile phone systems. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Interactive voice response」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|