IVR Intervention

Besides its typical use in customer service interactions, IVR systems have recently been deployed for more experimental purposes. Last year, two National Institute of Health studies were utilizing the technology as a way of conducting real-time in situ phone interviews with research subjects who were battling substance abuse. A new paper appears to demonstrate a similar application for primary care preventive service providers. The paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine describes a pilot study using an IVR system in alcohol screening and brief intervention for patients who were heavy drinkers.

After an office screening by a physician, the subjects interacted with a mixture of human-operated and IVR systems outside of the office as a means to dissuade them from drinking to excess. Interactions only lasted from three to seven minutes, but helped reduce alcohol use by an average of 25% among subjects two weeks after the initial office visit. Approximately 40% of subjects who utilized the IVR system reported that it helped motivate them to change their drinking behavior. Furthermore, subjects who experienced both human-operated and IVR systems indicated that they were more at ease with the automated intervention technology. This study only represents a small sample and was conducted to test feasibility of larger scale studies in the future but the results do indicate that an IVR system could be very useful in helping heavy drinkers change their behavior.

IVR Year in Review

Historians will remember 2009 for many different reasons although chief among them will likely be the worldwide economic downturn and its effects on business. The IVR industry suffered as much as any, but there were several bright spots throughout the year. Despite some people writing off IVR systems as a mature product on the decline, there were several innovative uses of the technology that will almost certainly sustain it for years to come. Some novel uses include business continuity management systems created and implemented for the H1N1 pandemic (1, 2, 3) and other unforseen catastrophes. There were also many novel implementations of IVR in health care management and delivery including virtual medical clinics, out-patient monitoring and followup/medication reminder services. In addition, academic researchers found potential benefits from the use of IVR by making it easier for test subjects to submit real-time data via mobile phones while outside of the laboratory environment.

Despite the advances and new uses of the technology and potential for future growth in more traditional applications, there are still many common mistakes being made during the design and implementation that need to be addressed in order for companies to fully capitalize on the power of IVR. Several individuals and companies in and outside of the industry have complied very good lists of common problems and other considerations that should be made before rolling out an IVR system (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). By creating lists of best practices and learning from internal mistakes and customer feedback, IVR has potential uses for many years to come. It appears that 2010 will continue to be a difficult time for many companies, but those that work to improve their products and exceed customer expectations should weather the storm and flourish when the economic recovery begins in earnest.

Over the course of the year, this blog has been a work in progress and we want to thank everyone for spending a few minutes reading our posts each week. Please feel free to discuss any of our past or future articles in the comments section. Together we can make this blog and others like it forums for progress and improvement in the IVR industry. All of us at Universal Digital Productions would like to wish everyone a safe, happy and prosperous new year. See you in 2010!

Academic Research Through IVR

IVR technology has been used widely for many purposes beyond customer service including automated opinion polling and market research questionnaires. Behavioral researchers at the University of Buffalo have taken it a step further and are currently applying the technology in two National Institute of Health funded studies. The research involves investigating the effects of alcohol, marijuana and the situational behaviors that are associated with their use. The IVR systems are configured to make random calls to subjects' cell phones and conduct surveys of their experiences with respect to their use of alcohol and marijuana.

In the past, these studies have relied on subjects taking surveys at scheduled times and giving their responses based on remembering what they were thinking and feeling at moments in the past. With the use of IVR technology, subjects can be inconspicuously surveyed over their cell phones while they are actually partaking in alcohol or marijuana and can give much more relevant responses. Not only does this give more pertinent data for the study, but it also increases the privacy of participants. The true test of this survey methodology and it's future will be to see how it compares with similar studies conducted in more traditional manners.