"You have reached the end of voice mail."

Recently, I have been involved in a fairly complex interactive voice response (IVR) redo, and I have begun to wonder if we have been working on the wrong technology. Most of us struggle with IVR systems more and more often, challenged to "touch 1 if ...," "touch 2 if ...," and more. Indeed, I have changed vendors a number of times after becoming frustrated with their IVR or voicemail applications.