Sprinklr IVR provides us the ability to connect to a brand’s APIs and obtain data from their internal systems to use on Sprinklr’s Care Platform. In this article we will learn about how admins can configure IVR to work with brands’ APIs. 

APIs are mini programs that help to fetch data from third party servers or applications. It can be a CRM system that stores customer information, or secured bank servers that store user account details. 

Business Use Cases

Sprinklr needs to deal with customer data of brands to better service customers as well as help the agents in dealing with customers’ queries, for example -  Using the caller’s mobile number to get his account balance and credit card due payments, checking the user’s order history if he calls to raise a return order ticket

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Solution

To obtain such information about the customer, we integrate the brands’ API within Sprinklr, and access these APIs within the IVR. We then use the extracted information in processing customers’ queries further.

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Configuration Steps

Inside the IVR, we provide the option of selecting the brand API This is in the “Add API” node.

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Components:

1. Choose API: API needs to be integrated with Sprinklr from the backend. Once added, they appear in this dropdown to choose from

2. Input Parameters and Values: API pulls out data based on certain inputs. Input Parameters takes the value that needs to be sent to the API. It can be a user input or case / profile property. Input Value is the value against which this input parameter is checked. If there is a match, required output is returned.

3. Outputs Parameters and Values: Output Values are the fields that we want as output from the API. Output Parameters is the name of the variable that we give to that particular output field.  

4. Exception Variable: This is a required field which helps us identify if the API worked fine or gave an error. Exception variable will return true if the API fails.

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API node is followed by a decision box with 2 paths- API successful and API Failed on the basis of Exception Variable. More paths can be added as per requirement similar to the decision box mentioned earlier. 

Areas where an API Response can be used in the IVR

The response from an API can be used in multiple other nodes using the resource selector to service client needs. Some examples are below.

1. In decision boxes, response parameters can be used to check for customer priority, check for existence of a customer, check for threshold of balances, authenticate customers, etc

2. We can assign different variables to certain response parameters which can then be used to tag custom fields or work on internal business logic.

3. Other IVR flows can be called using the API response as an input

4. The operator says node can voice out information received from the API response as a variable.

5. Visibility of prompts in the Gather Customer Response node can be done on the basis of a response variable received from the API.