Recently, I tried to book air line ticket using IVR from one of the leading private air line operators in India. The ticket booking process was not on IVR, only the payment part using credit card was on IVR actually. The process went like this:

1. I called up the IVR number. It gave me options to choose from menus like booking, check ticket status etc.

2. I selected Ticket booking, it asked for domestic or international and I choose domestic.

3. The IVR transferred my call to an human agent. So I asked the human agent, how the booking would be done. She explained that, she would block the ticket for me after getting my details like name, departure city to arrival city etc., and the call would be transferred to IVR payment gateway where I would have to enter my credit card details. As soon as payment is processed successfully, the IVR will transfer the call to human agent again who would provide ticket number ( PNR) and would email the ticket.

So, the whole ticketing was not completely automated by IVR, but human assisted. I could think of one main reason why it is not possible to make the ticket booking process completely automated system. How to put a name on the ticket! Most probably, this problem might not be solved in near future until every person has one unique ID.

But, this problem of entering a name could be solved by sending one SMS ( Short Messaging Service ) to register to the airline before making call to book the ticket. IVR application can verify this registration details along with caller ID and use the name from there. This can work as good as ( even better and faster ) collecting these data by human agent.

Apart from this, there are other ticketing where entering name (or identity proof) is not as important as in air line ticketing, like cinema ticketing, bus ticketing, IVR could be fully automated. Also, with advent of ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition), entering name might be possible, but still it may not perform satisfactorily.

IVR ticket booking can offer few benefits:-

1. IVR is accessible on telephone from anywhere. The same may not be true for internet, availability of PC etc.

2. IVR could be much faster process of booking a ticket if the person is a registered frequent flier of the air lines or registered member with personal details. One would be able to book a flight by just entering the flight number and date of journey!

3. IVR may even use ‘already stored credit’ card details for faster processing. Credit details could be collected during initial registration process either through website or manually.

4. IVR will offer more security if registered member is mapped with his phone number.

Though, in the present circumstances, the human assisted ticket booking looks like best option, still benefits of faster ticket booking could be provided to its registered member of frequent flier programs. The same way, IVR could be used for booking tickets where members can register themselves using website and filling up their personal details and book tickets on the move!

It may take some time design a complete automated ticket booking system using IVR where personal details are required. I would like to learn if some one has developed completely automated ticket booking system using IVR!

Email has revolutonised the way people communicate, exchange messages and information. Even after many innovative applications like SMS, web-based innovations like Twitter, Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace, email was holding its forte, exchange of mails.

Techcrunch

Likewise as I wrote enhancements, innovations about voice mail systems if implemented using CTI board and smart IVR application recently on 2nd November 2009, two days later, I had found a real innovation in voice mail system on Techcrunch. Google Voice has created quite an interest in managing and using voice mail integrated with web technologies, now Ribbit Mobile says, Goodbye to Voice mail, say hello to Ribbit Mobile!

According to the article, Ribit mobile takes over the voice mail of your mobile phone and routes any voice mail to the server of Ribit Mobile, and stores there with new greetings. It also sends out email using text to speech conversion engine to the subscriber’s email id, send SMS to his mobile phone! Though, I am wondering what is the use of converting the voice to text for sending it to Email account when it can send the voice messages itself in compressed WAV format as email attachement ? Now a days, no PC or laptops comes without sound card and multimedia. Even many mobile phones can play WAV files!

So, I was just wondering, will voice mail system go email way ? Freely available and accessible on any PC/Mobile with internet connection ? Will there be another hotmail.com ? May be HotVmail.com ?

But I think, integrating IVR applications and web technologies, some ‘killer application’ could be innovated by some smart kid!

What is UMS ( Unified Messaging System) ?
In one sentence, UMS can be defined as a system that provides phone subscribers with the ability to access, read and reply all their messages in whatever form from any terminal (whether telephony-based, Internet-based or both) that may be available. Message types are normally, Email, Voice Mail, Fax and SMS. UMS provides a single mailbox to store all all these messages and then access these messages from mobile phone, telephone, website or as SMS on mobile phone! For more, please visit Niche Tech Services NTS1BOX product page.

With the above description, it is obvious that IVR Software will play the main part in a UMS Solution. In fact, one can view UMS as enhancement of IVR Software.

1. Accessing ‘Message’, either Email, SMS, Voice Mail or FAX one has to use an IVR Software. This IVR software will be programmed to give options to read Email, SMS, Voice Mail or FAX to a caller.

2. Depending on the choice, IVR Software will retrieve Email, read it out to caller using TTS(Text To Speech). It will also give option to reply by the caller as a voice message, which will be stored as Audio File ( WAV File) and replied to sender as email attachement. For Option to download as SMS, IVR Software will trigger SMS Module to send out the email as SMS.

3. For Voice Mail, its a straight forward retrieval and playback of stored messages.

4. IVR Software can also send and receive FAX! The CTI Card has to have FAX support.

5. For SMS again, SMS texts would be read out to the caller and a voice message would be sent as reply to the SMS sender.

Best part of an UMS is, for every incoming message, be it SMS, Email, FAX or Voice Mail, a subscriber can be alerted by a outbound IVR Software.

UMS can be an extension of Voice Portal Software. Voice Portal operators can easily upgrade their IVR Software to give functionality of UMS. This can be new revenue earner for voice portal.

So, IVR Software can be extended to serve as UMS.