November 1999

SERVICE GAINS,
Changing Lanes, And Automobiles

BY FAYE MATTHEWS

At 50, NASCAR is the oldest stock car racing sanctioning body in the world. It sanctions over 2000 races a year, the main 32 of these being held under the NASCAR Winston Cup. This is the highest form of stock car racing in the world, and as the fans' hunger grows for action, information, and involvement, opportunities to provision unique customer services continue to emerge.

In 1997, Atlanta-based Sportscom brought the "Fanscan" service to Interact, Inc. The service was already being provided to Sportscom by another service bureau. Interact took the idea as it existed (Sportscom's main development criteria) and developed a product that practically eliminated the hands-on administration needed to support the service as it was being implemented by the other service bureau.

A privately held software solutions development company, Interact is devoted solely to enhanced voice and information processing. Their software solutions have been implemented extensively by carriers for cellular, wireless, and service bureau needs.

Interact's solution for SportsCom at an end-user level came in the form of access cards resembling pre-paid calling cards in appearance, with the circuit's top drivers pictured on the front. Interact made it possible for fans to simply dial an 800 number, enter the PIN number printed on the card, and listen to the actual conversation between the driver and his crew as heard over a scanner at the race. SportsCom provides the feeds from the scanners to Interact's Voice and Information Processors (VIP Platforms), which are engineered with a built-in delay to allow for "bleeping out" any language that would be inappropriate for younger race fans.

On a more technical level, the caller first dials the 800 number. The system answers and prompts the caller for account information. This account information is collected and verified against the host database, after which the application prompts the caller with the options of listening to a FanScan feed or listening to any of several pre-recorded voice slots (or, optionally, making a long-distance call).

If the caller does not have an existing account, the system will prompt them for credit card information and create an account. Once the transaction is completed, the caller then has immediate, complete access to the services available.

To allow SportsCom to promote their unique race conference call service, Interact needed to ensure that the solution was reliable, resilient, high performing, and flexible. It was therefore essential for Interact to select core ingredients that could meet these demanding criteria. This called for products that could present the IVR functionality required (play prompts, collect DTMF information, conference calling, etc.) and that were accompanied by a high standard of technical support and service to ease the integration of the technologies incorporated.

From their experiences with a number of alternative products, Interact felt that Aculab best met their service, performance, and price criteria. Interact's application generator and their Enhanced Calling Services (ECS) product were used in the final solution. Integrated into Interact's "software engine" was a combination of Aculab's signaling and protocol support and speech/data technologies, accessible through Aculab's Prosody speech resource card.

Prosody is a single-slot solution that, according to developer requirements, can provide from 60 to 240 speech channels and from 30 to 120 trunk channels. The card allowed Interact to configure a variety of free speech algorithms, including record and playback, conferencing, and DTMF tone detection. Furthermore, Prosody is operating-system independent and can be developed within a choice of NT or Unix (including Linux) environments.

The decisive factor in the equation, however, was the level of customer service and technical support provided. According to Phil Van Beveren, Interact's director of operations, "Aculab has proven to us that their level of expertise and the products produced from that expertise allow us to implement new products and services for our customers that set a level of standards far exceeding our competitors' capabilities."

SportsCom has now been in successful operation with Interact since the beginning of 1998. The latest reports are that SportsCom is averaging between 20,000 to 30,000 minutes of usage per month — a trend that is set to increase as the sport's popularity grows.

Faye Matthews is the marketing communications specialist for Aculab, a leading manufacturer of open-standards- based speech resource and digital connectivity products for the computer telephony community. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at www.aculab.com.