Interactive Voice Response Systems (Hansard, 27 June 2000)

§ Mr. Ben Chapman
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many agencies of his Department use interactive voice response systems when dealing with telephone inquiries from the general public. [127553]

§ Mr. Battle
In the UK no FCO Department uses interactive voice response systems when dealing with telephone inquiries from the general public.

§ Mr. Ben Chapman
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many of his Department's telephone lines used by the general public are responded to by interactive voice response systems. [127388]

§ Mr. Battle
None of the FCO's telephone lines used by the general public is responded to by interactive voice systems. Where it is sensible and efficient to use them there is an increasing use of telephone lines which are answered by voice processing systems, but these respond to touch-tone telephones rather than the human voice. These systems are deployed overseas only where the in-country telephone infrastructure is good and where it is common practice for such systems to be deployed.