Building an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) System with Python, Django and Twilio ¶

Introduction ¶

Last year my team and I worked on a very challenging IVR system.

After almost a year in production and thousands of processed transactions, I teamed up with the great people over at the Twilio blog to write an introductory tutorial for developing IVR systems using Django and Twilio IVR.

Aside from “making your server talk” and diving into the cool speech features,

I found the most challenging part working on IVR is designing the views .

Unlike APIs and Forms, IVR is very limited in the type of input it takes (DTMF tones, transcribed speech), and the amount of data it can communicate and process is limited.

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response system.

It’s a way for you to communicate with your users over the phone.

IVR is operated by voice and by the DTMF tones that phones produce when pressing keys on the keypad.

Just like your web site, mobile app or chatbot, IVR is another way for you to interact with your users. IVR holds a unique set of features that makes it ideal under some circumstances:

Visual impairments: Users that rely on screen readers to navigate websites and mobile apps are used to interact with voice based interfaces.
No Internet access: Users in remote areas or in places where an Internet connection is not constantly available or very expensive.
Technologically challenged: Users that have trouble dealing with websites and apps, like the elderly, often find IVR much easier to operate.
No access to smartphones or a computer: Users that don’t own a computer or a smartphone at all, or users such as drivers that at certain times cannot handle a smartphone.

Building an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) System with Python, Django and Twilio ¶

Introduction ¶

Requirements ¶