IVR (interactive voice response)

What it is

An IVR routes callers through a fixed decision tree. Traditional IVRs take touch-tone (DTMF) input. Speech IVRs accept a limited grammar ("say billing or technical support"). Both are deterministic: every path was designed in advance, and anything off the path fails or falls through to a queue.

A voice agent replaces the tree with a conversation. The caller says what they want in their own words, and a language model works out the intent and the details.

Why it matters when buying

Two reasons. First, the IVR sets the baseline you are replacing. Its containment and transfer numbers, and its abandonment rate, are the comparison the project will be judged against, so pull them before the pilot starts. Second, the IVR rarely disappears. Many deployments keep a short IVR front door for language selection, a recording notice or a legal disclosure, then hand to the agent. Some keep DTMF as a fallback for callers who cannot be understood. How the agent sits inside your existing contact-centre platform is an integration question, not a slogan.

What to ask

Ask how the agent is reached: does it replace the IVR, sit behind it, or sit beside it as an option? Ask what happens to a caller the agent cannot understand after two tries. Ask whether DTMF still works mid-conversation for account numbers and consent. Ask how call-quality metrics from the old IVR map onto the agent's reporting.