A person who has an account – whether it is savings, current or any other – in a bank would like to know his account balance status any time. In the present scenario, the customers have got only three options – walk down to the bank to get these details or contact the bank staff through telephone or go for the Internet banking facility.

In this speed age, walking down to the bank just to get the status information is something that cannot be imagined. Then, the customer has to go for the next option – contact the bank staff through phone. At the beginning of the day, the bank staff will be happy to provide the information. Their regular office work, which is equally important, and attending customer calls will make them exhausted by the end of the day. There is another main drawback for these two options – the information will be available only when the bank is working.

If they go for the third option – Internet banking, they need computers, Internet connectivity and sufficient working knowledge. All customers need not have this infrastructure. Even if anybody has, they have to sit in front of the system to get the information.

Out of these three options, majority goes for the second option – contact the bank staff during office hours to get the latest information. But, the banks should have sufficient staff to handle such customers. It is not feasible to have people only for managing the information centre. So the banks will have to give this job additionally to the highly skilled people. This will naturally bring down the bank’s total productivity.

IVR system developed by Xtend Technologies Pvt Ltd can easily handle the Tele-banking enquiries, which will help the banks streamline their staffs to more manual-intensive jobs thus enhancing productivity and reducing paper environments.

Implementation of an interactive voice response (IVR) system to automate the provision of the information on the latest account balance status can easily replace the labour-intensive manual activities of the banks. The new system can streamline and standardize the process at a substantial cost savings. This like a normal telephone enquiry system facilitates enquiries relating to the latest accurate account balance status of the caller.

IVR based automated information systems using ordinary phones are becoming very popular and affordable these days. Instead of relying on word of mouth that is quickly out of date and expensive, automatic phone messaging lets you contact the right point and get the most accurate, reliable and latest information instantly from your seat!

A user friendly automated service menu offers you convenient access to your account coupled with security as, all your transactions are protected by your PIN (Personal Identification Number).

In general, the IVR access mechanisms for Tele-banking are as follows. For deposits, the customer would need to key-in his ATM/Debit card number and its corresponding ATM PIN or the Bank Account Number and the corresponding PIN. For credit cards, the customer would need to key-in his 16-digit card number and its corresponding ATM PIN. For Demat account holders, the customer would need to key-in his 14-digit demat account number and its TPIN. For Bond account holders, the customer would need to key in his bonds holder number only.

In addition, instead of going for the automated service, if you need any assistance on your banking needs, you can speak to any of the friendly customer service officers.

Using an IVR system, a customer can get controlled access to his accounts information and can easily retrieve the latest information on the various Tele-banking services provided by the bank such as account balance status. When a person dials the number from an ordinary telephone, he is automatically taken into the IVR system because the telephone line is connected directly to it. After the welcome message, the system will first ask the caller to ‘press 1’ to get their latest account balance status or ‘press 2’ to go to the ‘loan status’ or ‘press 3’ to go to ‘set bank appointment’ module and so on.

If the caller presses 1 on his phone keypad after the welcome message, he will be directed to the account status module. The caller will then get a voice message to press 1 for Saving Bank Account Status or press 2 for Current Account Status, etc. When the caller presses the desired key, he/she will be asked to key-in his/her account number. This part will identify the customer. Now, for authentication, again they will be asked to enter their PIN (Personal Identification Number). Once the customer is authenticated, he/she will get the latest accurate information. When the caller exits from the system, he/she will be greeted with a ‘thank you, visit again’ message.

The main advantage of an IVR based system is that the caller can any time get the latest updated information on the various value-added services of the bank by just keying in the respective numbers on an ordinary telephone. Customizing the IVR system can also incorporate provision for many other features like logging of all the incoming calls, report on the list of customers who efficiently use a particular Tele-banking facility, etc. Adding the multi-lingual features can solve linguistic problems.

Phone banking is a convenient way to bank 24 hours a day, 7 days a week subject to system availability and maintenance. With Phone banking you can manage your accounts in a fast, easy and simple to understand manner and what's more, you can do it from the comfort of your home, workplace or anywhere where you have a telephone. There are no fees for using this service so not only can your banking be much easier, with careful planning it can also be fee free.

Account Balance Status Information System can now be accomplished quickly, efficiently and cost effectively using the latest and most modern IVR technology from Xtend Technologies.