Bringing Speech Technologies to the Enterprise

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Bringing Speech Technologies to the Enterprise

• Ken Waln
• C.T.O. and V.P. of Engineering
• Edify Corporation
• kenw_at_edify.com

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Agenda

• Why Enterprise Speech?
• Branding
• Routing
• Economies of scale
• Single-number Access
• How Technology can help

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What do I mean by Enterprise Speech?

• Employing speech for multiple applications and
  organizations
• Providing consistency across applications
• Pushing speech down to smaller applications
• Branding your Speech Interfaces
• Making Speech an Enterprise initiative, not just
  solving a problem

4
Current State of the Market

• Few implementations are truly enterprise focused
• Many companies have multiple IVRs in many silos
  and several speech initiatives
• The customer experience in many cases is horrible
• Total Cost of Ownership is often unknown (and
  probably higher than many realize)

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How an Enterprise Initiative Can Help

• Cost
• Systems
• Software
• Training
• Application Components
• Physical Infrastructure
• Telco costs (including transfers)
• Back-office connectivity
• Why not share the burden?
• Makes it practical to do more applications
• Customer satisfaction

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How it helps the customer

• One phone number, easy to find
• Enter information once
• System has access to more data
• phone numbers to do ANI routing
• CRM data
• Reduced transfers between automated systems and
  between call centers
• Dont reenter data (CTI)

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Typical Situation
Incoming call
1 English2 Sales
Deep in menu press 1 for store locations
Network transfer
PSTN
ACD Press 1 for English Press 1 for service, 2
for sales, 3 for support
Gets a store location
Service Vendor 2 DTMF Router by product
Support Vendor 1 DTMF Router by product
Sales Vendor 1 DTMF Router by function
Locator Outsourced speech
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So What Did The Caller Experience

• Three Voices
• Two Ringing Phones
• Two Your call may be monitored
• Or even three?
• Two DTMF systems
• Different instructions
• One speech system
• Outsourced
• Generic voice, no branding
• Probably 60 of the call was getting to the right
  place

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And What About the Company?

• Toll charges for long call
• Network transfer charge
• Outsourcing fee
• Many systems to maintain
• Poor call tracking
• ACD says call completed with a transfer to
  locator success
• Sales IVR says call transferred may or may
  not log why
• Outsourcer says caller got what he wanted but
  did he?
• What if the nearest store is too far or he asked
  out of curiosity but had a real question?
• No chance to transfer back or complete another
  transaction.

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Voice Portal Phase 1
PSTN
ACD Only for live call center Immediately route
all calls to Portal
Locator Built into Portal
Voice Portal
Web Service Data Feed
VoiceXML to Portal
Sales 3rd Party App Server supplies VoiceXML
Service Backend system feeds data to app on Portal
Support Voice App Server Supplies VoiceXML
Dialogs
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Results for the Caller

• One Voice, One Brand
• One Disclaimer (if needed)
• One set of Instructions, etc.
• One Dialog
• How can I help you?
• Briefly tell me the reason for your call
• Transfer and go back always available (no
  transfers)
• No dead ends
• E.g. Can do a transaction after the locator
• Short call
• In and out got what he needed

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Results for the Company

• Positive Brand Reinforcement
• No Network Transfer charge
• No charge for locator
• Shorter call
• Real statistics of call
• Transaction possible after locator app
• What if system asked can I locate a product for
  you at that store and fulfilled the order
  online?
• One system to maintain
• Sharing of ports
• Happy customer!

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Other Benefits

• Smaller applications can be cost justified once
  the infrastructure is in place
• Speech easier to cost justify
• Reuse applications
• Many functions will be shared between apps
• Cant share if they are on different platforms
• E.g. Product identifier for sales and service,
  store locator at main menu and in service
• Also use available packaged applications and
  modules
• Net result speech used throughout
• Higher containment
• Happier users
• Competitive advantage

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Voice Portal Phase 2
ACD Only for live call center Immediately route
all calls to Portal
VoIP Network
Voice Portal
Locator Built into Portal
Web Service Data Feed
VoiceXML to Portal
Sales 3rd Party App Server supplies VoiceXML
Service Backend system feeds data to app on Portal
Support Voice App Server Supplies VoiceXML
Dialogs
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Additional Benefit of VoIP

• Portal in front of PBX/ACD
• Could do this with PSTN, but network transfer
  charges apply
• IP transfer to ACD (or IPACD) for live help
• CTI data transfer simplified
• Transfer between networks and internationally if
  needed
• IP IVR with Speech
• Just another app server
• Can be located anywhere on the network

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What Makes it Work?

• Routing Front End
• Compelling Voice User Interface
• Robust Open Platform
• Applications and Components

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The Routing Front-End

• Key to having a one number access is accurate
  routing
• Use open prompting with a Statistical Language
  Model Grammars
• Keys to success
• Tools for grammar development
• Data collection
• Usability testing
• Expert designers

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VUI Design -- A Web Analogy

• In the early days, programmers built the web
  sites
• Often lackluster, not portraying the right image
  of the company
• In the next stage, marketing took over
• The message improved
• But sometimes usability suffered
• Big graphics on dial-up lines
• Complex menus
• Too much fluff, substance missing

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The Web Site Today

• How is a companys web site designed today
• Usually starts with marketing
• Creative teams, consultants, graphics artists
• Usability analysis
• Focus groups
• And finally the programmers implement it
• Testing before rollout
• And the design is likely to be refined and
  improved on a frequent basis
• Adding content
• Refreshing look and feel
• Give people a reason to return
• Efficient and effective

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Factors in branding and Persona

• Personality of the System
• Voice casting
• Direction of voice
• Non-Speech audio (audio icons, music)
• User Interface
• Text of prompts
• Technology production

Retailer
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Designing a Speech Application

• Persona
• Can become a logo of your company just like a
  visual logo
• Can provide consistency with other audio media
• Applications can utilize multiple voices if
  carefully designed (different voices for
  different purposes)
• Different tones and moods are appropriate for
  different applications
• Its art, not technology
• Create the persona
• Cast the voice
• Write the script
• Direct the performance

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The importance of standards

• Platform -- VoiceXML 2.0
• Conformance tested
• Allows interoperability of custom and packaged
  applications
• Also related standards for grammars (SRGS) and
  TTS (SSML)
• But it is not the answer, just a language
• Infrastructure -- SIP
• The VoIP standard
• Note H.323 is widely deployed, but SIP appears to
  be the standard going forward.

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Reducing the cost of deployment

• Reusable components
• Reduce time to market
• Consistent, tested user interface
• Packaged templates or kits
• Many reusable components for a vertical
  application area
• Locator module
• Name and address capture
• Payments
• Routing
• Range from a good starting point to complete
  applications
• Complete application should come with
  configuration tools, management reports, complete
  out-of-the-box VUI
• But customizable and brandable

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How to get started

• Pick the best initial application
• Fast ROI
• Demonstrable value
• Implement it in an enterprise way
• Standards based platforms
• Quality, branded interface
• Enterprise-class infrastructure
• Partner with experts
• A wide range of skills will increase success
• Use the success to add more applications and
  capacity

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Questions?

• Contact me by email -- kenw_at_edify.com

www.edify.com