Leveraging an increasingly popular speech technology to cut costs and boost customer service, an international airline that flies primarily to and from India announced this week that it’s installed a so-called “interactive voice response,” or “IVR” system.

 

Officials at Mumbai’s Jet Airways say that by installing an IVR-based payment system in their 24-hour call center, passengers can book and purchase eTickets any time.

 

“Our IVR service allows you to complete your reservation, pay using credit cards through a secure gateway and instantly receive your eTickets via e-mail,” company officials say.

 

Along with education and healthcare, travel has emerged as a vertical market that’s turning to technology more and more to navigate this slower economy. As TMC Group Managing Editor Erik Linask (News - Alert) reported this month, in-flight WiFi (News - Alert) has emerged as one the travel industry’s most frequent technology add-ons.

 

There’s been a concern regarding available bandwidth with in-flight connectivity, but research has shown that, in fact, most users are looking simply to keep abreast of e-mails, rather than trying to download large files or access bandwidth-intensive applications.

 

“The other compelling factor is that, as with the entire communications industry, wireless technology has improved significantly since in-flight WiFi was first tested several years ago,” Linask reports.

 

In the case of Jet Airways’ new IVR system, the industry is seeing an airline turn to technology for the same reasons that many other businesses with large call centers – or any company that relies on phone-based customer interactions.

 

Officials at the Indian company say that once customers confirm that they want to pay through the call center, Jet Airways’ call center executive will transfer them to a secure IVR system that calls for credit card details.

 

“On a successful authorization of the credit card, you will get an automated response and your eTicket will be issued and emailed to you instantly by the system,” company officials say.

 

One fringe benefit of the IVR-based system may be that Jet Airways will find itself satisfying more and more U.S. consumers. Another airline, Delta, finally pulled its own call center operations out of India because so many prospective customers complained about the off-shore facilities that handled their calls. Specifically, despite attempts to give Indian call center agents American-sounding names and even accents, U.S. consumers complained that the jobs should have been done at home.

 

If Jet Airways’ sets up a special American-branded IVR system for calls that deal with U.S.-bound flights, they might find themselves picking up market share.