Recommend a good Interactive Voice Response system to work with .NET?

Question

I have a client in the healthcare space, that might need an IVR system to take patients through a simple six question survey (all of the "press 1 for I Strongly Agree, up to 5 for I Strongly Disagree" type). The factors involved...

• Small client: We don't need enterprise-level firepower. We'd expect maybe 50-100 surveys per month.
• Hosted: We will be setting up an ASP.NET server with a SQL Server database hosted at a co-location facility. We don't have our own server room and pipes to the internet. I'll want something already hosted that I can tie into. (It needn't be on my ASP.NET server, of course.)
• Integration: The rest of their system will be .NET and SQL Server based, so I want to be able to automate pulling the data from the IVR system into my own
• Ad-Hoc: We won't be robo-calling. A typical scenario for us: My client receives a live call from a patients...and at the end, will say "Do you have another minute? Can I have you take a phone survey?" If the patient says yes, then either...
  • they hang up, my client dials a few commands into the IVR system, at the IVR calls the patient...or...
  • my client doesn't hang up, but transfers the current phone call to the IVR system

Suggestions?

Answer 1

Check out twilio

I believe surveymonkey has an implementation over this API that might also work for you.

Answer 2

I've used Microsoft Speech Server 2007 (Part of Office Communications Server 2007) in the past and it will meet all of your requirements. You can find out more about it here: http://gotspeech.net/

It looks like Speech Server 2007 has been renamed Tellme and you can find out more here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Tellme/developers/default.aspx

I have not used the new Tellme version, but Speech Server 2007 was great. You could implement an entire IVR system within Visual Studio using workflows and .NET code. I would expect Tellme probably makes it even easier.

Answer 3

Ricky from Twilio here.

We put together a C# tutorial for this exact use case I wanted to share: https://www.twilio.com/docs/tutorials/walkthrough/automated-survey/csharp/mvc

There's a sample configuration that lets you set all the survey questions you want to ask:

protected override void Seed(AutomatedSurveysContext context)
        {
            context.Surveys.AddOrUpdate(
                survey => new { survey.Id, survey.Title },
                new Survey { Id = 1, Title = "Twilio" });

            context.SaveChanges();

            context.Questions.AddOrUpdate(
                question => new { question.Body, question.Type, question.SurveyId },
                new Question
                {
                    Body = "Hello. Thanks for taking the Twilio Developer Education survey. On a scale of 0 to 9 how would you rate this tutorial?",
                    Type = QuestionType.Numeric,
                    SurveyId = 1
                },
                new Question
                {
                    Body = "On a scale of 0 to 9 how would you rate the design of this tutorial?",
                    Type = QuestionType.Numeric,
                    SurveyId = 1
                },
                new Question
                {
                    Body = "In your own words please describe your feelings about Twilio right now? Press the pound sign when you are finished.",
                    Type = QuestionType.Voice,
                    SurveyId = 1
                },
                new Question
                {
                    Body = "Do you like my voice? Please be honest, I dislike liars.",
                    Type = QuestionType.YesNo,
                    SurveyId = 1
                });

            context.SaveChanges();
        }