mKRISHI: Simplification Of IVR Based Services For Rural Community

Abstract

Tele density in India stands at 904 million wireless subscribers as on March 2014[1]. This provides a bigger opportunity to roll out multiple services such as agriculture, healthcare, e-Governance, etc. But it offers lot of complexities and challenges such as--psychometric profile of the users, willingness, education level, device fragmentation, data network quality, etc. Also, 80% of Indian population have basic phones which can text and make calls[2]. Hence, we need to create "voice" based services on Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform to reach out to such users. IVR based mKRISHI® Lite agriculture advisory services were offered to farmers from four climatically vulnerable states of India. The users were of different age groups, income and education profile and also belonged to different ethnicity and culture. Their response to the system was analyzed over one year using system data and logs and independent surveys were conducted. The results were then implemented in the design. This enhanced the user comfort level by 1.6 times and reduced overall query-with-issues by 23%. This paper captures the experience gained during the design improvement of the mKRISHI® IVR service.