The Problem with Legacy IVR

DTMF Trees Are Dead

Traditional Interactive Voice Response systems force callers through rigid menu trees. Press 1 for sales. Press 2 for support. Press 0 to speak to an operator — which then puts them on hold for 20 minutes.

The result: caller frustration, high abandonment rates, and operators fielding calls that should have been resolved automatically.

Existing AI-powered IVR solutions from major vendors solve this — but at the cost of sending every conversation to a cloud API, creating privacy risks, ongoing per-minute costs, and vendor dependency.

The UNYGMS Approach

Local AI IVR Stack

  • Whisper (offline) for real-time speech-to-text
  • Local LLM (Llama / Mistral) for intent understanding and response generation
  • Coqui TTS or Piper for natural text-to-speech synthesis
  • Asterisk or FreePBX as the telephony backbone
  • AGI/ARI scripts bridging AI to PBX in real time
  • Zero cloud dependency — air-gap capable

What We Build

IVR System Capabilities

Core

Conversational Call Routing

Callers speak naturally — "I need help with my invoice" — and the system routes them correctly. No menu memorization, no miskey frustration. Intent detection with 95%+ accuracy on business-domain vocabulary.

Integration

CRM & ERP Lookups

IVR queries your internal systems in real time. Customer identified by phone number? Pull their account status, open tickets, order history. Agents receive full context before the call is even connected.

Automation

Self-Service Resolutions

Appointment booking, order status, balance inquiries, FAQ answers — handled by AI without human involvement. Escalation to a live agent only when genuinely necessary.

Compliance

Call Recording & Transcription

Every call recorded and transcribed locally. Searchable archive, automatic PII redaction, compliance-ready retention policies. No transcription data leaving your datacenter.

Multilingual

Language Detection

Whisper supports 100+ languages. The IVR automatically switches to the caller's language mid-conversation. Deploy once, serve internationally.

Analytics

Call Intelligence Dashboard

Volume trends, resolution rates, peak times, common intents, escalation reasons. Data-driven optimization of your call flows with no third-party analytics vendor.


Technology Stack

Open Source, End to End

Telephony Layer

  • Asterisk 21 — open-source PBX, battle-tested at enterprise scale
  • FreePBX — management UI for trunk configuration and extensions
  • SIP trunking — integration with any SIP provider or on-premise PRI/ISDN
  • ARI (Asterisk REST Interface) — real-time call control from application code

AI Layer

  • Whisper large-v3 — state-of-the-art offline speech recognition
  • Faster-Whisper — 4x speedup via CTranslate2 for sub-second latency
  • Llama 3.1 / Mistral — intent classification and response drafting
  • Piper TTS / Coqui — high-quality, low-latency local voice synthesis

Integration Layer

  • REST API connectors for Salesforce, HubSpot, custom CRMs
  • Database-direct lookup for on-premise ERP systems
  • Webhook triggers for ticket creation, appointment scheduling
  • LDAP/AD lookup for employee directory routing
Latency

Real-Time Performance

End-to-end latency (speech in → voice response out) under 800ms on an 8-core server with Faster-Whisper and a quantized 7B LLM. Imperceptible to callers — indistinguishable from a human response pause.


Use Cases

Who Uses AI IVR?

Healthcare

Medical Appointment Lines

Patients book, reschedule, and cancel appointments by speaking naturally. HIPAA-compliant because no data leaves the hospital network. Integrated with scheduling systems.

Finance

Bank & Insurance Call Centers

Account balance inquiries, fraud alerts, payment arrangements. Sensitive financial conversations stay on-premise. Automatic escalation with full context for complex cases.

Logistics

Delivery Status Lines

Caller says package number, system pulls real-time tracking data and responds in natural language. Handles thousands of concurrent calls with no operator involvement.

Government

Public Services

Tax queries, permit status, utility connections — government call centers handling sensitive citizen data require on-premise AI. GDPR-compliant by design.

Get an IVR Assessment