Time was when high call volume companies would hire hundreds of call centre agents just to keep up with the thousands of calls they receive every day. For companies, this represented huge investments in infrastructure, equipment, manpower and time. However, in spite of these, clients had to wait for several minutes just to have their call attended to by one of the agents, which is not always good for customer relations.

People were always asking for better customer service while companies were constantly on the lookout for ways to improve client service while saving on costs.

In the early 1960's a new call centre technology called Interactive Voice Response or IVR was developed. It allowed clients to interact with a company's computer through pre-recorded prompts and responses heard by the caller by pressing on the keypads of a touchtone phone. It offered relief from having to wait a long time to have a call attended to as all calls are immediately answered once they get through. It also allowed continuous 24-hour operations while saving on employee expenses. However, it posed a challenge since some callers complained of getting confused trying to keep up with the numerous menus.

In the 70's quite a few companies have picked up on the idea of incorporating the IVR technology in their call centres to automate call handling and improve service. Around this time, speech recognition software was already being developed and incorporated into IVR. This allowed more convenience to callers since systems now began recognizing and responding to speech. Callers literally began speaking to computers and got either pre-recorded or dynamically generated responses, even if recognition was still limited to small vocabularies. However, since the technology was still relatively young, it was costly and complicated to use.

In the 80's as the demand for IVR continued to gain momentum, more and more companies got into it. Speech recognition systems were continuously being developed and improved to provide further convenience to callers. As more and more players came in, the development steadily progressed while costs slowly dipped.

From the 90's up to the present, call centre technology has improved so much that a high level of customer service quality is now possible at minimal cost. With the emergence of more powerful computers, what was once accessible only to huge corporations with very high call volumes is already benefiting smaller companies as well. From having to hire hundreds of agents to attend to calls, call centres now save a lot while maintaining a high level of customer care by using voice recognition software. Call centres can now operate round the clock without having to worry about rising wage and infrastructure costs. IVR is now used not only for inbound calls but for outbound calls as well. It may even be used to identify and organize clients in order to design personalized services depending on their preferences.

Customers, on the other hand, enjoy numerous benefits with the continuous call centre technology improvements as well. Since ivr has allowed call centres to operate 24 hours, 7 days a week even with minimal workforce, clients now have the freedom to access information at any time of the day without having to wait a long time to have their concerns addressed. And since all calls are answered instantaneously, this saves time and costs for the client. With speech recognition software, a long and confusing list of menus is no longer a concern as well since services are tailor-suited to meet each client's needs. This means that each call provides convenience and ease of access to services required.

The great thing about call centre technology is that it is continuously evolving. Services continue to improve as new ideas are turned into new technology. What may be wishful thinking now may be tomorrow's reality. One thing's for sure though, as more advancements in this field are made, more and more people and companies alike are sure to gain from them.

Looking back at how much progress has been made to enhance this segment of customer service, and how fast these advancements are taking place, we can only look forward with optimism at how much more we stand to benefit from it in the years to come.