The impact of voice characteristics on user response in an interactive voice response system

System voice within interactive voice response systems (IVRs) was investigated in order to determine if voice impacts a user’s input responses. In a medical setting, it is possible that a particular voice personality and/or gender may induce more or less disclosure, thus driving a patient to relay more or less sensitive information. In the IVR setting, one could determine this via examination of a user’s button-press responses. In this study, a male and female voice personality expressing an upbeat, professional, and sympathetic personality recorded a script for a medical IVR. Users were randomly assigned to one of these voice personalities when completing a health survey over that IVR. It was found that disclosure rates were not affected by the type of voice heard, nor did they differ by user gender. Additionally, disclosure was higher on the IVR version of the health survey than on a web-based version, further recognizing the privacy offered by IVRs. These findings indicate that designers of IVRs may not have to put additional effort into the selection of voice talent and can instead focus on the design of the IVR, itself.