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Dual-Tone Multifrequency (DTMF)

Glossary

What is Dual-Tone Multifrequency (DTMF)

DTMF (Dual-Tone Multifrequence) is a call center technology used to run IVR systems and other automated equipment. In short, DTMF is the technology that assigns different frequencies of sound for different buttons on your phone (0-9, #, *). When pressing each key, system plays a different sound of two frequencies (to avoid human factor from trigerring the system) which equipment on another side of the call understands as a command.

DTMF is one of the most wide-spread technologies for managing remote automated equipment. In most cases, this technology is used to manage connection between FXO and FXS, and to run IVR systems. In the case of IVR system, each key on your keypad has two frequencies linked to it and played when you press it. These frequencies are basically the commands for IVR system to play each exact message from the menu, and that’s how all auto attendant systems work, excluding those which use NLP (Natural Language Processing) as voice recognition.

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