E-com portal needs no introduction for anyone who uses internet. E-com has at least revolutionised the way we buy tickets to traveling, if not our groceries!

Now, with advent of 3G services by telecom operators and affordability of 3G enabled phone with dual camera, we can hope to see IVVR portal for e-com portal! It will be an one step ahead of IVR E-com portal I wrote in my recent post. IVVR portal takes care of all drawbacks one faces in using normal web based e-com portal and IVR based e-com portal! Still, IVR e-com portal will score over everything for those people with visual disabilities though!

IVVR(Interactive Voice and Video Response) e-com portal could be accessed by any 3G enabled mobile phone, they can surf any products, be a T-shirt or latest sports car! He can even do test drive a car virtually! It will revolutionize the way one buys a cinema ticket! It has already done, I hope where SpeechStorm has implemented IVVR for movie ticketing in Etisalat. First watching trailers of the available movies and then deciding to book tickets from comfort of home with family or even in office cafeteria with friends, sounds very interesting and appealing to me!

How about buying your favorite shirt on IVVR E-com portal where you check out many shirts as per your choice ? How about entering your size, colour, prints, budget etc. find your desired shirts quickly and smartly? Best part is you can do this from comfort of your drawing room, without any fear from those suicide bombing at malls.

Everything looks awesome about IVVR based e-com portal where one can browse through products quickly and buy instantly. One may not go to mall, spend hours in browsing through products. Though spending time in malls with family and friend may be good leisure, but it may not remain so, specially with shrinking family time as well as security concern. Through IVVR e-com portal, one will be able to ‘try’ the products which a web based e-com portal was unable to provide!

But, the major problem with IVVR is its dependency on 3G networks. Though 3G networks are present in many countries including India, but it has not penetrated to the mass yet. But we can surely hope, it will penetrate soon. Because of this, no one can guess how telecom operator will charge 3G usage. Because, most probably, everyone would be using various IM for making voice calls instead of making ‘plain old voice cal’ in the age of 3G. But if telecom operators offer some unlimited scheme per month, there should be some interest in setting up and usage of IVVR e-com portal. Otherwise it will remain just a hobby of tech savvy people, not a mass consumer item!

But IVVR as technology and IVVR E-Com portal as application surely look exciting!

What is speech recognition or automatic speech recognition ?
Automatic speech recognition can be defined as a process by which spoken words are converted to text. Many people may confuse with voice recognition as speech recognition. Voice recognition is recognising the speaker of the voice, while automatic speech recognition recognise the words spoken. While speech recognition is mainly used for menu selection, voice recognition is used for checking authorised user.

How automatic speech recognition can be used in voice portal ?
Voice portal is a large IVR application which provides many value added services to the voice portal user. Normally, voice portals are operated by telecom operators to provide information of their services, activating deactivating services, utility services like matrimonial, job search, listening to music and download, jokes etc. Since voice portals have large information to be provided to a caller, it needs to give out a long list of options. But the DTMF digits or touch tones on a mobile phone or telephone instrument is limited. So automatic speech recognition is used as an alternative to touch tone or DTMF input for selecting a menu option in the voice portal or IVR.

Advantages of Automatic Speech Recognition over DTMF in Voice Portal:
1. Caller can choose a menu option quickly without having to listen to boring long list of menus. IVR can become truly interactive with its caller using same human voice.
2. Using an IVR was always a problem as one he has to remove it from his ear to look at the keypad and press a key. This can be again quite irritating for a voice portal user. Implementation of ASR completely remove this problem.
3. Change of menu or introduction of new options a menu, or shuffling of options in a menu becomes easier as menu options are the words most commonly used by everybody for a particular option. Using a touchtone or DTMF menu, any option was assigned to a DTMF key or a number. With ASR, it is assigned to the word itself.
4. Not many people are aware of # and * keys as they are hardly used in normal operation while IVR seems to use them for some options for very long menus. ASR does not face this kind of problem.

So, one may find it very useful in a developer point of view to use ASR in voice portal as it gives more flexibility for designing menu and presentation of data. But as user point of view it may not that user friendly as touch tone. This mainly due to lack of 100% accuracy in recognising the word spoken by the caller. Wrong detection of words by ASR may result in very awkward menu options and information fetching. One way of tackling this problem is to confirm a user of his chosen option in the menu with a YES or NO for every menu option. But it would be too irritating for a user! A voice portal is normally a premium service where irritating caller is the biggest crime one can commit!

Problems of Speech recognition
1. Accuracy of recognition
Accuracy of recognition can be thought as converting words spoken by a user accurately to ts corresponding text.
As per information available ( by Googling and visiting ASR engine provider websites), almost all ASR engine has high accuracy for detecting two words, YES and NO. Apart from them, other words like numbers, date of births etc. has lower accuracy in recognising. For example, accuracy of recognition of numbers 1,2,3 etc vary from 87 to 91% depending on ASR engine. Accuracy of recognising other natural English language is fare much worse! As per report, recognising departments in company is maximum 85%!
Though accuracy can be improved by training of ASR, but it is not practical at all and does not serve a voice portal.

2. Different accent
Using ASR in a big country where people speak different languages or same language with different accents,speech recognition accuracy is bound to fare worse.

3. Confirming YES/NO again and again is irritating
People may design IVR very intelligently to confirm for any doubtful word recognition by YES or NO, but it is still irritating for many people and it slows down the time for fetching an information. In a voice portal where caller pays by minute of usage, it may not work in the interest of voice portal users.

Still, automatic speech recognition (ASR) is used widely in voice portal now a days and here are the few services in voice portal where ASR may work well :-

1. Contests
2. Classifieds
3. City wise weather information

Voice based value added service is known as voice portal. This is good revenue source for both mobile and land line telecom companies. Just like SMS Portal, voice portal also provides similar services but accessed through IVR. With advent of voice enabled menu using speech recognition technique, IVR has become very popular as well as user-friendly application for both mobile and land line subscribers.
IVR can be thought as platform to deliver content to users. The content may be anything, from latest news to mobile ring tone. I have written about Technical challenges and commercial challenges in a voice portal in my previous posts. IVR as content delivery platform has advantage:-

1. Its is easy to dial using the keypad while SMS is not easy to type on mobile phones.
2. Few contents are better delivered on IVR. For example, ring tone can be heard on IVR before it is downloaded by user.
3. It is limited by number of characters like in SMS. For example, complete news can be heard on IVR. Same goes for other contents like jokes, breaking news, etc.
4. IVR can be used by any kind of mobile phone instrument. Other content delivery platform like WAP does not work on low cost mobile phones. SMS does not work on many land line telephone instruments. It may be a major factor in a price sensitive market like India where maximum mobile subscribers use low cost handsets. India is a huge mobile market with more than 400million mobile subscribers.

Here I would like to list few services which are popular in India:-

1. Listening to Music
I find it amusing that people listen to music on mobile phone in this era of Ipod, FM Radio etc.! The main reason is, FM is available in major cities in India. The initial investment is high for many Indians for IPod or MP3 players. But many IVR VAS players in India has provided option to listen unlimited songs with a monthly subscription of paltry Rs. 30.
2. Astrology
3. Contests
4. Jokes
Yes, people do hear jokes on IVR!
5. Shayeri
This is an interesting application for IVR VAS.

Though I have previously written about tools for developing IVR software as well as standardised VoiceXML based IVR Software, I was always thinking about writing rapid application development tools for developing simple to complex and large IVR software available in the market presently.

What is Rapid Application Development Tools for IVR Software ?
These are the tools like a Microsoft Visual Studio used for rapidly developing IVR Software as per IVR call flow. While Microsoft Visual Studio is very vast and supports many kind of applications, RAD for IVR Software deals only with IVR Software or IVR kind of voice application. For example, Auto Dialer, Voice Mail, Auto Attendant etc.
Normally they have beautiful GUI ( Graphics User Interface) for implementing IVR Call flow with graphical tools for controlling CTI board related and Voice Related functions. They provide visual tools implementing IVR Call Flow with minimum requirement of actual coding.
They use their own scripting for IVR Application with own syntax or syntax of standard computer programming language like basic, C. Some even provide controls (pre-compiled executable API code for specific function, can be used as it is) to be used standard Software Development Environment like .NET, Visual Basic etc.

I think there is a scope for comparing three ways to develop IVR Software or any Voice Applications as a whole. The three ways to develop IVR Software are:
1. Legacy IVR Software using native API of CTI boards using C++
2. Using open standard VoiceXML
3. Using Rapid Application Development Tools like VBVoice

In my last post about about Legacy IVRS and VoiceXML IVRS, I tried to compare pros and cons between first two in the above list. Here I would like to mention few benefits of using RAD tools for developing IVR Software.

1. One can rapidly develop IVR Software as the name suggests. The developer does not have to worry about CTI Board related functions as they are already built-in the RAD tools, tried and tested with many CTI Boards.
2. Short learning curve for developing IVR Software. As RAD tools use very simple, easy human kind of language as well as visual tools, it becomes very easy for anyone to develop IVR Software quickly.
3. Support Multiple CTI Boards. This may be one of the major advantages for using RAD tools. As RAD tools provide support for CTI boards from multiple vendors, the developer need not re-develop his IVR Application from scratch while changing CTI Cards.
4. Development Support. RAD Tools providers good support in developing the IVR Software and it comes handy as C++ developer may get stuck somewhere and nowhere to turn for help, but himself.
5. The IVR and other voice applications are getting more and more complex day by day. So, RAD tools gives an IVR Developers option to concentrate more on the call flow and IVR usability aspects than spending time on CTI board interfacing.

As I belong to old school of development, I always advocate use of good old C++ for writing stable, robust and working round the clock software. And I feel RAD Tools may not be suitable for large, complex and enterprise IVR or Voice Applications.

But recently I had tested one RAD tool for developing IVR Application, namely VBVoice 5.6.1 from PRONEXUS INC. I hope to write about this and comparing it with other RAD tools in near future.

Donjin has range of CTI products starting with 8 port analog cards to 8 E1, 240Port high density Voice boards.

They support Windows OS and as per their website and they support APIs of Dialogic 5.11 System Release fro DMV1200 boards! That seems to be an useful feature as many IVR Software are developed based on Dialogic APIs. Migrating from Dialogic to Donjin cards may be easier.
They also have single port and dual port SS7 Signaling boards. The signaling board and voice boards are connected through CTI cable just like Dialogic Boards.

Recently they have entered into an strategic agreement with one Indian Telecom Software Development Company Amdale.
Donjin Communication Technologies (“Donjin”), A leading manufacturer specializing telecom products, multi-media switches based in Shenzhen, China and Amdale Software Technologies (“Amdale”), A global developer of open architecture-based SCE (Service Creation Environment) building blocks framework for telecom applications, based in Gurgaon, India, have entered into a strategic understanding. As per news on www.donjin.com.

While I have not tried their boards or there is no price list given on their website, it looks like a cheaper alternative to Dialogic CTI Cards for lower density, normal IVR Software.

High-End digital CTI boards for a voice portal is not cheap! In fact some of them cost as much as a Honda Civic car in India. So, choosing a right CTI Board for your Voice Portal may not be easy, that is until you read this article .

So, how to choose a CTI Board for your voice portal application ? There are few parameters using which one should choose CTI Board for Voice Portal:-

1. Number of Expected Simultaneous Calls
Most important factor to consider! If you expect simultaneous calls to be not more than four, buy any four channel analog card. But than, most probably it will not remain a voice portal! Ideally, if one should choose a CTI board with 50% more capacity than the expected number of glutenous calls. if some one expects 10-15 calls, he should choose one 30 port Digital CTI board.

2. Time to connect a call
Time taken for connecting a call when an user call is important! It depends of the interface the CTI board supports. For example, CAS R2MF connects much slower than SS7 or ISDN PRI. One will hear “teent teent teent” sound after dialing the Voice Portal before connection. Normally quick and instant connection to Voice Portal is desired.

3. Interface With Switch Support
The type of interfacing with switch of Telecom Provider is important parameter to consider. Many Telecom Service Provider may not have CAS or ISDN protocols on their switch or they may not be willing to provide that connectivity to Voice Portal operators. So, one must consider about available protocol with Telecom Provider before deciding on a CTI board. Interfacing with various protocols is responsible time to connect of calls. SS7 cards are costlier than ISDN PRI or CAS R2MF boards, connects calls almost instantly. And some CTI Manufacturer like Dialogic does not have a combined board which has both Voice Processing and SS7 Signaling so far! This kind of arrangement has its own advantage over combined CTI boards. For example, one can have add more Media Processing (Voice Processing) Boards while keeping one signaling board in one system. Also combined (Signaling and Media Processing) CTI boards do not come in low density configuration, they normally have 8 E1 or more. 4E1 meaning at least 120 simultaneous calls!

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3. Scalability and IVR Software
This is another aspect one should not ignore. If the Voice Portal becomes popular, which is the main aim by any Voice Portal Operator, so the CTI Boards should have scalability feature where increasing number of simultaneous calls should not make existing hardware redundant, or make IVR Software obsolete. Separate boards for signaling and media processing is recommended for scalability. IVR Software should be designed such a way that, it can handle more voice resources without having to re-develop the IVR Software.

4. Support for the CTI Board
Availability of development support as well as quick 24 hours support for any problem in the CTI hardware is a must! Every minutes of downtime of Voice Portal, the operator loses revenue! So, one should choose a CTI vendor which can provide quick support or quick replacement of CTI hardware in case of CTI board failure! Also, CTI Vendor should have active forum to discuss various issues and should have good number of third party developers!

5. Cost
Cost is very important, well for everybody! But, one should not compromise of quality of CTI cards for cost.

My Favourite and Recommended CTI hardware:

1. For 30 to 120 simultaneous Calls.
Start with Dialogic D/300 JCT or DMV1200 card. They have ISDN, R2MF protocol, good support, quite tested CTI board. Many developers have written IVR Software on them! Dialogic has good support, active forum, large number of developers. But since they are the biggest CTI vendor, they may not provide you with a demo card for development of your Voice Portal!
These boards can be even used with Dialogic SS7 Signaling boards.

2. For 240 or more simultaneous calls
1. Synway SHD-240D-CT/PCI
Good Value for money, good support. Built in Signaling and media processing. Cheaper than Dialogic equivalent.
2. Dialogic SPCI4/SPCI2 and DNI2410
Awesome combination, great scalability, very good support and large number of developers as well as very active forum. Cost is almost double that Synway though!

Both outbound and inbound IVR Application can be used as advertising tools. It can be quite effective as it can be really interactive with quick response unlike print or visual advertising.

Using Inbound IVRS as Marketing tools:
Inbound IVRS is those kind of IVRS where user calls to IVRS. Normally this kind of IVRS uses a toll free number. Else most probably, now a days nobody will make an outgoing call and listen to advertisements!

Voice Portals are such inbound IVRS where advertisement can be inserted. Voice Portal normally has many applications. Each application can have different advertisements. For example, if a voice portal has Music Application where user listens to songs, one can insert advertisements of upcoming music releases as well as movies. This kind of relevant advertisements will not irritate the caller much.
These advertisements can be interactive. For example, one can play promo of a movie, and ask people to rate the film. Same way for a song! This kind of facility is unique in IVRS.
Telecom companies can provide new schemes, services on their customer care number! This we may have experienced quite a time now!

Using Outbound IVRS
Outbound IVRS are those which make outbound calls to a person and provide some information as well as can get some feedback. Predictive dialer, Automatic Dialer are few such IVR Applications.
Using outbound IVRS as advertising tools has been there for quite some time now! Predictive Dialer is a kind of IVRS which is connected to a telephone database and it retrieves telephone number from this and makes outgoing calls. It tries to gather few information from the called person before it transfers the call to a live agent. Outbound IVRS can advertise the following way

1. Advertise about product after the connection. Give the called person option to rate the product, to give feedback in voice, to record if he is interested in the product and know further. Depending on the customer’s choice, IVRS can either transfer the call to a live agent or store the number is prospective client.

2. During election, candidate can make a “Vote for me” appeal on phone!

3. Various queries, opinion polls can be conducted.

4. Telecom companies can announce new services, schemes and prompt subscribers to avail them.

5. In medical industries, outbound IVRS can be used to advertise new drugs, its feedback. It can also prompt patients about daily medicines.

6. Many campaigners like awareness program can be undertaken effectively. For example, AIDS awareness, Pulse Polio Drops, Road Safety etc.

IVRS Companies those work for medical industries are in good number. Rob McGrady, of Unit E-Clinical Consulting has compiled list of IVRS Companies for clinical trials. Thank Mr. Rob, for the update.

Here is the list of IVR Companies in clinical trial and health care :-

1. Almac
2. Aptuit
3. Averion
4. Bilcare
5. Clarix
6. Clinitec
7. Compleware
8. Covance
9. Criterium
10. DataTRAK
11. Easyivr
12. etrials Worldwide, Inc.
13. ICON
14. ICTI
15. IVR Clinical Concepts
16. Medpace
17. Parexel
18. Perceptive (they bought a large provider name ClinPhone recently)
19. Pharmanet
20. Phoenix Data Systems ( Update: Phoenix Data Systems merged with BioImaging and is now known as BioClinica : by Dave)
21. PPD
22. Premier Research
23. Registrat
24. Sympro
25. Swift Call
26. Synteract
27. Trident
28. UBC
29. Westat
30. Kendle : Provided by alexcline
31. Vocantas : Provided by Nicole from pronexus.com.

I hope this list of IVRS Companies will help people looking for IVR Applications related to medical industries.

Toll Free Number and IVRS has very close relationship.  Big companies, apart from Teleocm companies, which have large customer base, normally have a toll free number as call center. In US, normally Toll Free number starts with 800, in India, it starts with 1800.

Recently I got an inquiry from a company in India, about Toll Free Number  and setting up a call center. After talking to the company, I realised, many people have either no idea or wrong impression about Toll Free Number. For Example,

a. Toll Free numbers are free for both the toll free number owner as well as caller.

b.  The procedure to have Toll Free Number must be very difficult. Lot of Red-Tapism involved.

c. One toll free number will have one line.

But, actually Toll Free numbers are free for callers only! Not for the company who owns the Toll Free Number!  The company has to pay for each incoming calls by the duration of the caller or as per negotiation with the Telecom Service Provider. That is why Telecom Companies can have their own Toll Free numbers! and in India, it changes circle to circle too! Even the Telecom Company has to pay to other Telecom Operators to accept free calls from them!

It is not difficult at all to get a Toll Free Number! But hey, if you are late in getting hold of Toll Free Numbers, you may not get those fancy, easy to remember Toll Free Numbers! All you have to do is, call up any Teleom operator, they will come running to you or at least that is what happens in India!
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One toll free number will have minimum 30 channels or 30 lines! Because normally Toll Free numbers are provided through E1 lines. And having a Toll Free number with only 5/6 lines does not make any sense, also Toll Free Number without IVR System in place does not make any sense! At least that is my opinion. So, for any IVR System for a Toll Free Number, one must have Digital CTI Card!

Is there any company which can offer all these services ? I doubt if there is any such company presently. You  may get companies which can provide you solutions with Call Center Applications, some will provide you CRM applications, some will provide you only the EPABXs, ACD etc. But the complete solutions of a Toll Free  Number requires the followings:

1. Get a Toll free number from Telecom companies. Properly discuss calls landing from all other Teleom  operators in your area/country.

2. Look for suitable call center application

3. If you have already a CRM in place, which normally one does before one thinks about Toll Free Number and Call Center, integration might be a nightmare! It is not easy to integrate Call Center and exiting CRM, but then it is not difficult too! but proper care and planning must be taken.

4. Call Center Hardware along with proper power back up.

So it is a complete turnkey solution! If you thought you would get a Toll Free Number, put up an 4 channel IVRS and you will have a call center running, you are wrong!

After more searches and after getting comments about more CTI Companies,

[With the price hike in Dialogic, many of my clients have been asking me about alternatives. I have also started searching for some alternatives of Dialogic. I will be building a list and comparative article on them. Kindly send me any company.]

Here is another company I am looking at
TelcoBridges :

TelcoBridges is an innovative provider of enabling communications technologies for telecom system integrators, solution providers, and telecom equipment manufacturers worldwide.

TelcoBridges’ hardware and software products support VoIP, TDM, and IVR technologies enabling the rapid development of carrier-grade telecom systems.

Founded in 2002, TelcoBridges and its customers have deployed systems in more than 30 countries for some of the world’s largest telecom operators.

Technology
Supporting the most widely accepted industry standards and protocols, our technology is integrated by our system integration partners to build the industry’s most cost-effective, high-performance telecommunications systems marketed to fixed, mobile, and IP-based telecom operators.

Architecture
TelcoBridges delivers scalability, high-availability and unmatched redundancy into the design of carrier-grade telecom solutions by its solution partners.

Platform
Using our development tools our customers minimize development costs and reduce their development cycle, bringing innovative telecom solutions to market in record time.

Headquarters
Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, where TelcoBridges performs its R&D and production activities, the company has further sales representation and technical support staff in three regional offices: USA (San Jose, CA), China (Hong Kong), and Korea (Seoul).