Traditionally, IVR systems have been reserved for the
phone, whereas more static contact pages are on
companies' Web sites. Both of these arrangements have
their drawbacks. Customers don't like wading through
multitudes of menus on a phone IVR just to wind up
speaking to the wrong person in the end. Current
contact pages are fine, but finding only an e-mail
address, phone number and postal address of the
company probably won't answer a customer's questions.
Today, contact pages can be combined with an IVR on
the Web. A traditional IVR can be navigated on a
company's Web site so a customer can experience the
benefits of both an IVR and the Web. One of the first
companies to implement this concept is FrogJazz. Their
product, FrogDial, enables contact centers to publish
IVR phone menus directly to the contact Web page.
Contact centers can create customer service Web pages,
incorporating click points for multichannel customer
interactions. In this way, customers can navigate the
IVR menu on the Web at their own pace and may be able
to skip quickly to the information they are seeking.
Without requiring HTML programming skills, the
FrogDial phone menu editor employs a simple
drag-and-drop interface. A click-to-talk VoIP button
or click-to-chat button can also be added to
appropriate pages.
Installation
The actual installation of FrogDial can be downloaded
from FrogJazz's Web site or from a CD-ROM. Either
method takes only moments, so there are few elements
of the process worth mentioning. First, the PC being
used must have Microsoft Internet Explorer V. 5.5 or
higher installed. Second, the proper server name or IP
address (usually from a server at FrogJazz) must be
entered into the FrogDial client configure interface.
Finally, if there is a firewall on the client's
network, the internal IP address being used must be
associated with a real outside address and configured
appropriately so the firewall does not interfere with
the connection between the client and server. We had
little problem adjusting our firewall settings, and
FrogJazz let the IP address we specified to them
through to their server so we could test the FrogDial
software.
Documentation
The main part of the documentation is a FrogDial
tutorial. This tutorial is split into two sections:
Quick Course and Web Integration. It provides an
overview of FrogDial for both its editor and
administration. We went through the tutorial as a
guide for our testing and it discussed everything we
needed to know about the software in an understandable
manner. Help files are also included. While not as
detailed as the tutorial and not fully
context-sensitive, these files may be of service for
those users who practice the "wing it" approach to
learning the software.
Features And Operational Testing
When we accessed FrogDial, we immediately noticed the
clean interface of the editor. Both the editor and the
administrator resemble Windows Explorer with their
hierarchical tree interfaces. When a new or existing
file is opened in "edit" mode, new prompts can be
dragged and dropped onto the bottom of the editor
tree, which is the middle window of the screen. That
prompt can be moved to the appropriate position by
simply dragging it to the desired position. By typing
it into the HTML editor workspace, the prompt's name
can be changed. If the user prefers, longer prompts,
announcements or links can be word-wrapped. Once the
change is applied, it will show up in the editor tree.
In this manner, an entire Web-based IVR can be
created. As it is being created or edited, the
developer can preview it on the Web by clicking "Web
Preview" from the menu drop-down box to see how it
appears and edit for mistakes. All of this is done
without writing any HTML code, but there is a source
tab that allows developers to write the code if they
are so inclined. Overall, however, virtually anyone
with a good, logical design could build the IVR.
Besides prompts, other objects can also be dragged
into the editor tree workspace. These include
announcements, annotations, external links and
internal links. Announcements can be greetings,
important clarifications or other written text that is
presented to viewers of the contact Web page and can
be a useful source of information for the user.
Annotations are generally place holders or a note in
the editor tree that may not need to be visible on the
Web page itself. This is one of the reasons someone
might choose to uncheck the Web visibility box, which
is found in the General Properties portion of the
graphical interface. External links are used to
daisy-chain phone menus so that a caller will be
routed to the correct number even when the wrong
number was originally placed. Internal links allow a
developer to easily replicate menu paths that are
traditionally repeated throughout the Web-based phone
menu. All these features help users build a more
successful Web contact page.
There are also more advanced features available by
clicking on the Properties tag of the interface or
right-clicking on the appropriate prompt in the editor
tree. These features include scheduling, e-mail,
enablers (Web callback and instant messaging), Web
links and IVR links. FrogDial allows users to
intuitively schedule hours for placing particular IVR
prompts on the Web-based phone menu or even to
schedule emergency announcements. On certain pages,
customers might wish to contact a representative via
e-mail. This can be enabled by assigning the e-mail of
a particular representative to a particular page so
the customer need only click the link and compose the
message.
Web callback provides a customer with the means to
request a phone call from a live agent by entering a
standard telephone number or the proper SIP URL
address of the contact center to be reached. When the
click-to-talk button is pressed on the Web site, a
screen will appear onto which the customer enters his
or her name and phone number and waits for the
callback. At this time, the VoIP call reaches a
gateway and is routed over the Internet to a SIP proxy
server at Level(3), an Internet telephony service
provider (ITSP) that provides the IP-to-PSTN bridging.
The agent at the contact center is then notified and
the callback from the agent is automatically placed to
the number the customer entered. We tried this a
number of times with representatives at FrogJazz, and
each time, we quickly received a callback. While the
calls varied to a small degree in quality, we could
clearly hear the representative on every call. For
instant messaging, the address for the customer's AOL
or Yahoo! account must be entered in the space
provided. A click-to-chat button will appear at a
desired Web location, where a customer can activate a
chat session with an agent.
Web links are means for the customer to be directed
to other sites related to the information provided on
that page. IVR links are usually used to pass by long
Web IVR menus to the page that allows customers to
reach the appropriate live agent faster. For Web
links, all that needs doing is to add a name and the
URL of the Web page you wish to link for the selected
IVR prompt. The IVR link is similar except the
developer is adding a connection to another IVR prompt
instead of to an entirely different Web site.
An example of the use of many of these advanced
features on a Web page is shown in, which shows what a
visitor to the page would see. Like many pages, there
is a keyword search and other links. The customer
could also press the click-to-talk button to reach an
agent, click the phone number to return to the home
menu or click one of the number options to go back to
previously viewed pages.
When we were finished with the tutorial
documentation, we examined the administration portion
of FrogDial. Here, new users, menus, divisions, phone
numbers, standard messages and e-mail links are added
and information is centrally located. The admin is
straightforward enough that virtually anyone can use
it. There are also four types of menu reports that can
be printed: standard tree, menu statistics, complete
menu and IVR difference reports. The first three
reports are quite standard. The last would be the most
useful to developers as it contains all the changes
between the published version of the menu and the
edited version so the developer can more easily keep
the IVR system up-to-date.
While we were learning how to use the reports,
FrogDial gave us an Oracle error message: "ORA-00020:
maximum number of processes (500) exceeded." At that
point, FrogDial ceased to work and we could not obtain
access to the software. After a few calls to FrogJazz,
we discovered this message occurred when Microsoft
COM+ did not release connections. This is a result of
configuration issues between Microsoft COM+ and the
Oracle Manager for Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS).
Luckily, FrogJazz was immediately aware of the problem
and had FrogDial up and temporarily running in about a
half an hour. They claimed that this would no longer
be an issue in a few days, as they were in the process
of fixing the problem. We did not run into the error
again.
Room For Improvement
There are only two main improvements we would suggest.
The first has to do with the click-to-talk button.
Currently, once the user enters a telephone number and
clicks the button to wait for a callback, there is no
way to tell whether the call went through or how long
the wait will be before the callback. Only upon
receiving the callback does the user know the VoIP
call worked. There should be some type of indication
to show the call went through and how long the wait
might be until the customer hears from an agent.
Customers would appreciate this feature and would be
more likely to be ready for the callback.
The other improvement involves the reporting
functionality. We would like to see the built reports
on screen. Right now, the reports are directly printed
so a user cannot save a report on the hard drive,
print only certain portions of the report, or see and
edit the report before it is printed. On-screen
reports would add flexibility for the user.
Conclusion
FrogJazz has brought a new type of IVR to the table.
FrogDial is easy to use and may solve some of the
headaches customers encounter while either navigating
an IVR on the phone or on a contact page of a Web
site. Whether or not customers will accept this new
idea and FrogJazz's pricing scheme remains to be seen.
What we can say now, though, is that FrogJazz has
built an efficient and appealing product that allows
customers to find the information they need or to
reach an agent quickly.
[ Return
To The August 2001 Table Of Contents ]
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