IVR

Nowadays, it is imperative to retain a record or audit trail of voicemails for legal, documentation and confirmation purposes. Thanks to Common Voices, a supplier of voicemail migration solutions, one U.S. federal agency was able to preserve its voicemail content during a migration to a next-generation platform.

Boston-based Common Voices was able to seamlessly move the agency’s subscriber information, including voicemail messages, greetings and automated attendant call paths, from its legacy system to its new platform. Its discreet message agent transfer system provided protection of the agency’s original voicemail infrastructure, while automating the condition of new IP voicemail systems and protecting the settings of end-user profiles.

In search of a seamless movement to the customer’s IP voicemail system, Common Voices collaborated with Communication Resources, Inc., a specialist in unified communications. “Common Voices worked with us and the agency to make sure that the migration schedule matched their needs, as well as the needs of their tier-1 service provider,” said Gil Engles, vice president of sales at Communication Resources.

With the project finished on time, under budget, and without lost content or the burden of building new call trees, the agency was “very happy with the result,” said Engles.

“CRI was able to provide the highest level of customer service while Common Voices’ fail-safe migration process worked seamlessly behind the scenes,” said Engles.

Today voicemail has surpassed the basic “leave a message after the beep” stage, becoming another method to instantly obtain messages. Users no longer have to listen to messages, but now have the capability to read their voicemails through visual voicemail technologies. Phone.com (News - Alert), for example, offers a fully automated voicemail message transcription service to all of its customers. This allows users to view transcribed text of voicemail messages on their phone and within their e-mail inboxes. Smith Micro (News - Alert) Software, which provides software solutions for the mobility market, also recently brought its visual voicemail to market with a voicemail-to-text IVR service, as reported by TMCnet.

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet copy editor. Previously she was assistant to the editor at The Darien Times, a weekly newspaper in Darien, Conn., where she edited submissions, did page layout and design and helped manage the newspaper's website. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf