The first wave of voice portals targeted the consumer
market, providing Internet-based information such as
sports scores, weather forecasts, news headlines, and
horoscopes via the telephone. Voice portals promised
easy access to information users might find on the
Internet, without requiring an Internet connection.
While consumers enjoyed the convenience of mining the
Web from
anywhere using any phone, they didn't enjoy it enough to
pay for it, leaving the service dependent on advertising
revenue for support. This type of service has not proven
to be a sustainable business model. And as interesting
as these portals are, do people really want to talk to
the Internet?
Voice portal providers are now trying to reinvent
themselves and have turned their attention beyond
providing traffic reports and stock quotes to
streamlining business interactions. This shift from
consumer to business applications demonstrates that
businesses are looking for more sophisticated ways to
stay in touch with their customers.
Even more important than the portals themselves are
the platforms that the voice portals run on -- voice
portals are simply applications that run on Web-driven
platforms. The power of the technology behind voice
portals could significantly influence the way that
businesses and their customers interact. With the right
platform, businesses can run other applications that are
mission-critical for serving customers and generating
revenue. A business portal application through which a
company offers information on locations and business
hours is a nice service for customers. However, enabling
transactions and getting customers in contact with the
right agent for conducting business is what keeps your
business running.
Not all providers of voice portals can adequately
support business applications because they are not built
on a reliable, scalable, and carrier-grade platform. Let's
face it, who really cares if they can't get a sports
score? But, when it comes to mission-critical telephony
applications, every call is critical. A Voice Web
platform is the key element for supporting business
applications.
The Voice Web is based on VoiceXML, the emerging
standard for voice applications. Using VoiceXML, voice
applications are developed and implemented as easily as
Web applications, therefore, the flexibility,
performance, and control inherent in Web-based computing
can now be brought to the world of telecommunications.
The Voice Web platform merges the reliability and
scalability of the telephone network with the innovation
of the Internet to deliver a range of services, from
voice portals to applications that more effectively
process and queue calls, send outbound notification
messages, and provide interactive voice-based
self-service. It's important to look beyond the
applications to the platform underneath in order to
determine whether you'll be limited to a simple voice
portal or if you'll have the flexibility to deliver
additional revenue-generating applications based on the
same platform.
THE PLATFORM
The Voice Web platform bridges the worlds of
telecommunications and the Internet. It uses standard
technologies developed primarily for Internet use to
deliver information and services to any telephone. As
rapidly as the Internet has entered the public
consciousness and become part of daily life, the
telephone is still the most ubiquitous, most widely used
communications tool. When customers want immediate
service, they pick up the phone. It makes sense,
therefore, for businesses to design services to be
accessed via telephone, even if they leverage Internet
technologies to do so. This transforms the telephone
from a simple communications tool into a powerful
information tool.
The Voice Web platform should be built on open
standards. One reason for the rapid pace of innovation
on the Internet was the fact that it was developed using
open industry standards. That meant that developers were
free to create new applications that would work on the
Internet and in conjunction with other Internet
applications. In contrast, telecommunications has
primarily relied on proprietary systems owned by
particular vendors. Service providers were limited by
the applications and services developed by the large
switch vendors. The Voice Web platform, driven by
Internet standards such as VoiceXML, is open to the same
kind of innovative development as the World Wide Web has
been, and it brings the same kind of innovation to
services that can be delivered to the telephone. An open
platform creates opportunities for a range of
application development, maximizing the benefit from the
platform.
The platform should be able to run more applications
than just the voice portal. It's these other
applications that provide the true value because they
deliver mission-critical services. These solutions
include outbound notification, in which customers or
employees can be automatically notified of specific
events or issues, such as shipments, reminders, and
alerts. Another service is speech-enabled self-service,
which allows a more flexible and intuitive interaction,
and integrated Web and telephone-based systems for a
more consistent customer experience, drawing upon the
same databases and information.
The Web-driven technology also enables enhanced
personalization for a more customized customer
interaction. Call routing applications running on the
Voice Web platform enable enterprises to make more
efficient use of call center resources, with
personalized treatment of callers, network-level queuing
and routing for a "virtual" call center that covers
multiple locations and interactive, intelligent routing
and queuing based on a number of defined parameters.
These applications all enable enterprises to generate
additional revenue, improve their customer service and
cut costs associated with providing customer service.
Because the platform uses standards-based technology,
the number and variety of solutions possible for the
platform are limited only by the imagination of
developers. Third-party developers, service providers,
and enterprises all can develop new services to meet
specific business needs.
If the platform is to run mission-critical
applications, then it must be built to meet
carrier-class standards of reliability and redundancy.
It's only a minor inconvenience if a customer has to
call back to get a horoscope or a business location.
When important business services fail, the business can't
function. Enterprises must be assured that their voice
applications have the same kind of five-nines
reliability as they've come to expect from telephone
service.
JUMPSTARTING SERVICE PROVIDER BUSINESS
While applications such as voice portals based on a
Web-driven platform provide benefits for enterprises,
they have the potential to jumpstart new business
opportunities for service providers. That's because the
platform makes it possible for service providers to
deliver a variety of enhanced voice services and
value-added, high-margin voice applications to their
enterprise customers.
While consumer voice portal applications may serve a
public relations and branding function for service
providers, business applications that solve business
problems are where they will make their money.
Businesses already spend more than $40 billion per year
on technology to help them provide better customer
service by telephone. The Voice Web platform gives
service providers the opportunity to tap into this
market while strengthening their relationships with
existing customers by offering additional services. The
more services a customer receives from a particular
service provider, the more difficult it is to switch
service providers, especially if competitors don't offer
the same range of services.
LOOKING BEYOND THE SIMPLE
While voice portals offer an appealing way to leverage
the Internet to deliver Web content to customers,
business-savvy enterprises and service providers will
look beyond simple voice portals. They'll investigate
platforms that support not only voice portal services,
but also a range of other applications that impact the
bottom line. These applications benefit enterprises by
delivering a consistent, personalized experience across
all contact points. Meanwhile, Voice Web platforms offer
a way for service providers to enter new business areas
that will enable them to provide value-added services to
their enterprise customers.
And they can still use the platform to offer business
or consumer voice portal services.
Prem Uppaluru is president, CEO, and co-founder of
Telera, the
developer of some of first software platforms to deliver
and manage Web-driven voice applications. He has over 20
years of telecommunications, network management,
multimedia, and telephony experience.
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