Reaching learners remotely: 5 things we learned in getting started with IVR

SIA has spent the past month seeking ways to use interactive voice recall (IVR) technology to deliver digital financial service training to rural learners. This blog is a quick reflection on our adventure into pandemic-fueled IVR mania, and some lessons we learned that I wish I had known before we started. 

First, a little background. Our team is currently working in six different markets across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Capacity building, specifically around digital financial services, is a big part of our work. As the operational circumstances for our projects began to change due to mobility restrictions and social distancing requirements, our face-to-face capacity building efforts were put on pause. Just like most educational organizations around the world, we had to begin exploring digital channels in order to reach our learners. Most of our trainings are targeted at smallholder farmers or rural women, so this ruled out Zoom as a viable option. We also knew that low literacy levels would make SMS a difficult channel to use, so we decided to try transitioning our training curriculums into recordings that could be accessed via IVR services.  

While I had attended many a webinar on IVR and was familiar with the general constructs of the technology, I had never gone through a procurement process myself. As I am sure many other organizations are going through the same thing, be it for capacity building or data collection/survey implementation, I thought it would be helpful to share five key takeaways from our experience over the last month: 

1. There are generally two different types of providers you can engage with for an IVR campaign.

Most of the companies that responded to our RFP were mobile value added service (VAS) aggregators. These companies have established relationships with one or multiple MNOs in the markets we were engaging. They provide access to toll-free call-in services (toll-free for the learner), provide the IVR platform for delivering messages, and oftentimes offer recording capabilities and advice on content development. A key benefit to some aggregators is their ability to help you reach multiple markets.  

A few mobile network operators (MNOs) provided proposals for specific country deployments. These operators also provide the IVR platform for delivering messagings and recording capabilities, but they were less inclined to offer advice on content development. One thing to note about MNOs is that just because you are using their service does not mean they will not establish what are referred to as “reverse billing accounts” with other operators so the IVR number can be used by anyone regardless of the type of SIM card used.  

2. Airtime is what gives IVR life, and airtime costs money.

For many of us the idea of not having “unlimited minutes” is foreign, but in most countries around the world, mobile phone airtime is a prepaid service vs. postpaid (paying monthly). This means that every minute of airtime costs something. This might not be a big deal if you are rolling out smaller trainings, but what if you are trying to roll out training to 1,000 people? If the IVR training session is 30 minutes long, you will have to cover 30,000 minutes of airtime. During our procurement process, we learned that airtime costs vary greatly between countries and types of providers. Proposals that came directly from MNOs offered lower pricing on airtime, even when there was a reverse billing scenario. So although choosing to work with aggregators will allow access to multiple markets at once, airtime will come at a higher cost. 

3. IVR is typically something that learners call into.

IVR systems don’t typically call users. This makes marketing crucial. In some instances within our programming, this will be less of an issue, as we have already established relationships with learners through previous trainings — but in other cases we will be engaging them for the first time. So how do you get the word out about the toll-free number and encourage learners to call in? We found that most IVR services do not have any boots on the ground, meaning marketing for the training would have to be done by our own field staff or through bulk SMS messaging (which also comes at a cost). We also discovered that target SMS messaging has varying levels of accuracy when it comes to reaching certain demographics. For example, in some cases IVR providers were able to target women in specific geographies, but this wasn’t the case for all. 

4. When creating content for IVR, it’s important to take a minimalist — and creative —approach.

IVR is typically presented through a menu of options, meaning the listener has some agency over which topics or lessons they listen to. If content is complex and requires a lot of menu navigation, chances are people will lose interest. It’s important to create content that will keep learners’ attention. Menu titles should be catchy and intriguing. Think about them as a headline you would like someone to click on. The content itself we tried to keep under two minutes per lesson, and we limited the total amount of lessons to 11. We also learned that simply speaking about an issue might not be enough to keep interest, so we set up content in the form of skits, with three characters that are followed throughout the training. 

5. Mobile VAS aggregators provide more dashboard capabilities and improved level of measurement on impact and use.

While we haven’t yet launched our campaign, we also got a look into the monitoring capabilities to determine uptake, usage and comprehension. We found that mobile VAS aggregators provide more dashboard capabilities and improved level of measurement on how the IVR campaign is being used and whether it is having an impact on people’s comprehension of the subject matter (which will be done through key survey questions). The survey questions should steer away from sounding like a quiz on the content and instead try to ask something personal about how the information has impacted the learner’s life. While responses to surveys in IVR are typically multiple choice, IVR channels do offer the ability for respondents to record their answers to questions. If you are going to be receiving thousands of responses this is untenable, but if you are working with a smaller group of learners it’s a more realistic option.

We hope these takeaways are helpful to other organizations endeavoring to use IVR as a supplement or replacement for training activities in the wake of COVID-19. 

When we first set out, I also wished I had some examples of other RFPs, so here is a link to ours. While it’s not perfect, it gives you an idea of how we structured it and what we were asking providers. 

Good luck, and be in touch if this inspired any follow-on questions!