December 12, 2011
Hosted IVR - the Greener Approach to Customer Care
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
The excitement surrounding the cloud as the more economical way to drive business is one key motivator for migration. The other is the environmental benefits provided as companies rely on managed services to store data and applications. The same can be true of an interactive voice response (IVR) system in the cloud as it reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions.
This recent Plum Voice blog set out to explore the possibilities in IVR a little deeper, getting into onsite systems and the greater pull on physical resources and energy. An onsite IVR application requires infrastructure, something that can be eliminated with a hosted solution. The hosted approach to IVR prevents over-allocation of infrastructure as all infrastructure and capacity is located in one place.
The hosted IVR solution uses only the required resources necessary for actual usage. When an onsite system is in place, it often requires multiple system configurations in several different locations to ensure redundancy. Such configurations require energy and hardware. When these configurations are multiplied in many different locations, energy output is exacerbated and the demands on the infrastructure are increased.
Onsite systems require significantly more resources to drive power compared with hosted IVR solutions. With the hosted approach, customers are leveraging resources already in place, eliminating the need to purchase or build more. Hosting centers provide all the infrastructure, software and port capacity necessary to support a client’s needs.
The solution is hosted on one site, and redundancy is assured due to the technological capacity of the center. Companies seeking an enterprise-level IVR deployment want 24/7 uptime, fault tolerance, port capacity and redundancy, capabilities all readily available in hosted IVR. Companies can easily leverage this deployment method to improve data center efficiency as overhead functions performed and executed for every application are hosted. And, because these functions are supported for a large number of applications, each one is optimized for efficiency, reducing the necessary power and energy for execution. Clients leveraging hosted IVR do not have to worry about scattered technology or equipment. And, in reality, companies using onsite IVR instead of hosted solutions are essentially duplicating what already exists, taking an environmentally and fiscally inefficient approach to customer communications.
Hosted IVR doesn’t just eliminate the need for infrastructure and hardware investments for one client, but multiple clients as it can power hundreds, if not thousands, of IVR applications at one time. Plum Voice offers hosting and data centers that are readily equipped with the capacity to power thousands of enterprise-level applications in one place to promote efficiency while preserving the environment. This approach to IVR is a win-win for all.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Juliana Kenny
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