Interactive voice response

Containment rate is the share of automated conversations that end without escalation to a human. It is the primary efficiency measure for AI support, but a high rate only indicates success when paired with satisfaction and repeat-contact data confirming customers actually got their issue resolved.

Routing is deciding which agent, team, or AI agent receives a contact, based on intent, language, skill, customer tier, and availability. Accurate routing is the cheapest available reduction in handle time, because a misrouted contact pays the cost of being read and reassigned twice.

Voice AI is automation that handles spoken conversations using speech recognition, language understanding, and speech synthesis. It carries constraints text automation does not: recognition errors on names and numbers, sensitivity to accents and dialects, and a much lower customer tolerance for response latency.

Customer friction is any step, delay, or requirement that makes a task or issue harder to complete than necessary. Repeat contacts, channel switching, re-authentication, IVR misroutes, and unclear policies are common sources. Friction isn’t captured by a direct satisfaction question, so it gets inferred from effort and behavior. Customer Effort Score, repeat contact rate, and handoff counts all serve as proxies. High effort scores or frequent transfers signal friction even when a customer satisfaction index stays flat.