Monitoring the Situation with IVR

For many years IVR has been used as a tool by businesses to route calls from customers to appropriate departments and employees. Recently, IVR has been been utilized to disseminate information from businesses to customers and employees alike. With the advent of the text messaging, email and the internet, IVR has lost some of its uniqueness as a large scale communication tool. However a mere 25% of the world is connected to the internet severely limiting its reach. Cellular phones, on the other hand, are used by more than half of the world's population. This fact alone will keep IVR an important technology for years to come.

High in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia sits the Kingdom of Bhutan. The economy of the mostly rural country is dominated by farming. Every farmer's livelihood is dependent on his ability to find the best market price for his harvests. At one time, finding the best market prices was difficult, but thanks to the integration of cellular phones and IVR into their lives, tracking prices is easier for farmers than ever before. A farmer need only call the hotline and select his language to get up to date information on where he can sell his produce in order to maximize his profits. Although such a system seems commonplace here in the United States, there are emerging markets like Bhutan all over the world where IVR is only now being implemented.