Many businesses and other entities provide at least some form of customer service to their customers through the telephone. For example, some businesses provide call centers manned with hundreds of agents to answer calls from customers. Each agent may have access to information regarding the customer through a computer or network terminal.
A common complaint for a customer calling a call center is the wait time, especially for a customer calling for a routine matter. Although a business may reduce wait times by employing more live agents, increasing the number of agents can be costly. Rather than exclusively relying on more live agents, interactive-voice response (IVR) systems have been developed. In general, the IVR system allows the customer to access and request information through voice commands to an automated system rather than to a live agent.
Although an IVR system may provide some services to a customer that used to be provided through a live agent, at times a customer still wants to leave the IVR system and talk to a live agent. In such circumstances, it may be necessary to transfer the customer from the IVR system to the call center. Also, it would help the live agent and the customer if any information generated or edited by the customer through the IVR system was accessible to the live agent when the customer is transferred.