This week in IVR, we saw how Plum Voice’s cloud-based IVR services are good for not only your wallet, but the environment too. Not only do IVR solutions provide significant cost-savings, but according to a recent Plum Voice blog, it also can cut down on wasted energy by making use of cloud-based storage. Additionally, it was reported that its data centers can take advantage of server consolidation and virtualization, allowing it to seriously reduce its energy footprint.

Furthermore, a new study has shown that an impressive 70 percent of energy consumption is eaten by systems created to cool computer mechanisms, and that services like Plum Voice’s virtual IVR hosting can reduce this by 20 percent when utilizing the cloud.

In other news, it always seems like we’re hearing of a new and ground-breaking ways that speech recognition technology is changing peoples’ lives. This week, we learned of something in the making called the “iBrain,” which was developed by a startup company called NeuroVigil to be implemented by Stanford researchers to help one man finally communicate.

That man – Stephen Hawking – suffers from a degenerative neural disease which currently forces him to use a clunky, inconvenient device which works to decode and translate facial expressions and movements into speech. Conversely, iBrain easily slips onto the user’s head and proceeds to scan and process brain wave activity to understand thoughts and words. It can even differentiate different types of brain waves to detect specific actions or thoughts which are trying to be communicated. What’s more is that this technology may even one day be used to order exoskeleton movements, which could enable paralyzed individuals mobility!

Wrapping up this week is a particularly interesting story highlighting the sensitivity of the IVR industry. In a strongly opinionated blog post this week, an individual accused IVR as being “perhaps the worst example of technology gone awry,” yet the article continued to showcase how it is not the technology, but the vendor, who should be getting the bad rep. This argument is quickly shot down in an insightful debate where the new argument shies away from the tech and returns to the persisting fact that agents don’t treat customers like the human beings that they are.

“The technology does what it is simply created to do, but it is those who internally operate and control it on a day-to-day basis who really transform the customer experience. Yes, IVR could still require some fine-tuning, but what technological development isn’t constantly in the works for top-notch performance?” says the article.

For more information about what’s going on in the IVR world, be sure to check back same time, same place, only here at TMCnet. Have a great weekend – until next time!

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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