Interactive Voice Response interviews

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a system that allows telephone interviews to be conducted with little or no interviewer intervention. The IVR system speaks the questions to the respondent and waits for the respondent to enter the answers using the keypad on their telephone. A very simple analogy is a telephone banking system, where you manage your account by responding to automated prompts using the telephone handset.

Projects that use a combination of UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server and IVR have the following advantages:

▪You can use an autodialer to dial numbers and then have the interviewer follow an UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server script to interest the respondent in the survey. Having screened out unsuitable respondents, you can then use the IVR system to conduct the rest of the interview without interviewer intervention.

▪If you have projects that are concerned with very personal subjects or illegal activities such as drug taking, you may find that you obtain more interviews using IVR because respondents feel happier communicating with a computer rather than with another person.

An UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server script that hands off (transfers) interviews to IVR must perform the following tasks:

▪Dial the IVR system and pass any relevant data from UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server to IVR as a DTMF string. Typically, you will pass at least a respondent identification code to link the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server and IVR data.

The simplest way to achieve this is to write a function that does these things and then to call this function at the appropriate point in the script. You'll find an example function described in ‘Writing an IVR hand-off function’ on page 934 and there is a complete example script that you can run in Example IVR script.

This section also contains some notes explaining how UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server interfaces with IVR and suggesting ways of setting up a simple IVR questionnaire to test the interface. These notes contain some references to IVR commands, keywords, and screens where this is necessary to understand the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server side of the interface, but you should not assume that the information provided about IVR is complete in any way. Always refer to your IVR manuals for full details.