IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, basically, you call a company looking for information, and a computer detects your voice and telephone touch tones to get you the info you need. For example, let’s say you need to call the airline to get a flight status. A pre-recorded, pleasant sounding voice will ask for a flight number, and once you answer, the IVR system will answer you using pre-recorded voice clips. The airline you called pays a voice talent lots of cash to record all of these prompts, instead of paying hundreds, potentially thousands of customer service reps all over the world to look up the information for you.
Have you called your bank, cable, phone, or utilities companies, or even tried to order from your favorite catalogue lately? Despite its flaws, IVR is not going anywhere. IVR goes much further than just recording a standard outgoing voicemail message for a client. In fact, computer programmers are getting more and more savvy, and the more companies can relay data using a voice talent’s pre-recorded voice, the more jobs there are for voice talents. Offshoots of IVR is voicing GPS navigation, on-board automobile prompts, outbound sales calls, and robocalls.
When you are hired for an IVR job, you will record everything from alpha-numeric characters in all different intonations to long on-hold messages that will serve as time fillers while the person calling waits for information. IVR jobs can pay anywhere from $250-$25,000 per job, depending on the intricacy, script length, company profile, buyouts negotiated, and number of changes and pickups required down the road, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled for them. You can find marketing companies who implement IVR systems for corporations online, plus, IVR auditions have also been coming through regional agents more frequently. And save all of your on-hold work you’ve done so far to get yourself started with an IVR demo.