Most probably, the debate on merits and demerits of using ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition) would continue for some time to come, but in case of India, there are three compelling reason avoid using ASR where simple, old, robust and universally understood ‘keypress’ can do. While ASR can surely speed up and increase interactivity of an IVR system, in Indian scenario, it can be a big nuisance, specially for IVR vendors providing IVR to be used nationwide.

Here are my reasons:-

1. Poor Recognition due to background noise

With due respect to all ASR engines, India is a loud country with lot of noises all around! So, with lot of background noise, it is not possible to recognise words or phrases with high degree of accuracy. Indian cities are noisy with lot of noise pollution all around. Even Indian houses are not well ventilated. Indian villages are crowed with various domestic animal who create lot of sounds.

Because of this background noises, good ASR engines also fail to perform properly and end up with poor accuracy. But users will never appreciate the ‘genuine’ technical problems behind this, but the blame will fall squarely on IVR developer or IVR Vendor.

2. Languages and Accent

India is home to 1652 languages. Out of these, 29 languages are spoken by more than more than 1 million people and another 122 are spoken by more than 10,000. It has officially recognised 22 languages. English is widely spoken and understood all around the country but India also has more than 250 million illiterate people.
So with this statistics, one can easily figure out the changes in accents for speaking even English numerals, forget about English words or Phrases!

This lack of common accent for speaking out any word or phrase prevent any ASR engine detecting them accurately. But, everyone who has dialed into an IVR system, already know how to press a key from the telephone instrument or the mobile. So, in order to wider use of IVR as well as accuracy, ASR should be avoided.

3. Poor Mobile Signal

Most of the recent telephone users in India are mobile phone users. Apart from big cities, large areas as well as large pockets of cities too, have poor network signal and keeps fluctuating rapidly. Due to which, two human may be able to somehow communicate, but in case of IVR, there chances that it would miss some voices, part of voice which are vital for recognising a word or phrase by ASR.

So, even the best ASR would fail to detect words accurately resulting in caller dissatisfaction, call abandonment which will defeat the very reason for using an IVR system.

While there would be remedies, tricks and techniques to address these problems, but these are top reasons if some one wants to avoid using ASR in India!

NTS ( Niche Tech Services Private Limited), Udaipur, India based IVR company has launched an interesting IVR portal for Christ Gen Media, a Trivendrum ( Kerala, India) based which broadcast Bible on IVR in both English and Malayalam on 1st Aug 2010. The solutions is hosted in NTS IVR Environment in Udaipur and the application has been commissioned in less than 6 weeks time, as per web post in NTS website.

The “IVR Bible Portal” works on two modes, callers dial the Bible Number and gets connected to the IVR portal and in the other mode, caller dials the IVR number, gets disconnected, and then IVR calls him/her back! The call back is quite unique feature where caller may listen to IVR Bible Portal free of cost.

The Bible IVR portal has many options:-

1. Caller can hear the complete Bible, Old and New Testament by book number and chapter wise.

2. Caller can listen to Christian Devotional Songs, both in English and Malayalam.

3. Caller can listen to daily devotional song, daily sermon, daily Bible lesson which are updated daily.

As per NTS sources, the IVR Bible Portal has generated more than 2000 calls in 3 days and more than 12 thousand minutes of usage with as many calls. Christ Gen Media sources informs that, they will be introducing six more languages options in this Bible Portal including Hindi, Tamil very soon.

Most probably, this is an unique usage of IVR.

About NTS :
NTS specialise in Hosted out of Box IVR based Applications

About Christ Gen Media :

Christ Gen Media is Christian Media Ministry

There are few parameters or features of IVR which are important and are common to almost any type of IVR application. These parameters play very important role in making the voice application more user friendly. These parameters are used at many stages in IVR software or in any call flow. I hope, knowing these would help people who are looking to develop an IVR or looking to purchase IVR software.

These are very small parameters, but they may play crucial role in reducing call abandon rate in IVR. Some of them are :-

1. Allowing or not allowing caller to press a key while IVR plays the menu options

IVR may be configured to accept or to reject any key press while caller is listening the menu options. Allowing to press key during playing of menu allows caller to ‘cut through‘ the IVR menus and reach his desired IVR stage or menu quickly. But it may also increase chances of wrong key press, specially when some menus options are changed. Many regular caller may not like to hear known menus again and again.

2. Duration to allow a caller to press any key or voice command

Waiting time for callers key press or voice command may become crucial. During wait period, IVR does not play anything and become silent, so if this wait period is too long, caller may think the IVR is not responding, so disconnect the call.

3. How many times to play a same menu and number of attempts to choose correct menu options

Naturally, people make mistakes while pressing key or may make mistakes intentionally. So, it is important to decide the number of attempts one may try for each and every menu options. This kind of parameter may be required even while accepting some valid input from caller, for example mobile number, customer ID, complaint ticket etc. If this is not defined, then some caller may occupy some channel of the IVR unnecessarily.

4. Confirming menu menu selection of digit (s) pressed or voice command spoken

It is an important decision to make. Should IVR confirm every menu choice made by caller or not! Even in any software, when some one tries to do some important task, it pops up an confirmation window, similarly, IVR also ask confirmation for menu choice! But it may also irritate IVR caller. When using ASR ( Automatic Speech Recognition), confirming every option may become a necessity rather than a choice.

5. Inter-digit pause while expecting more than one DTMF keys as input from caller.

While caller enters multiple digits as input to the IVR, for example, credit card number, phone number, ID number, the duration of pause in between two consecutive DTMF digits or key press is important. Very long inter digit pause may result caller disconnect.

6. Using # ( hash) or star (*) keys to terminate

Deciding to use # or * keys to end entry of multiple digit is a good option. But these keys may also confuse some people who do not know about # or * keys as many of them do not use these keys. In India, many land line phones do not have # key. But with penetration of mobile phones, one may expect people to know about these keys.

These parameters are quite common and many developers use some configuration files or provide user friendly forms to configure.

I attended VAS Asia 2010 held today in New Delhi. While writing my previous post about widely used IVR systems in India, I put IVR for Value Added Service at the top. If the overwhelming presence of CTI board manufacturers with stalls and two IVR platform provider any indication, then we are surely seeing some boom in IVR VAS in India! Incidentally, the last year too, there were many CTI board manufacturers in the same exhibition!

VAS Asia 2010 Conference

Incidentally, I could not find any stall of any big VAS companies except few like NetxCell, Spice Mobile. The big names in Indian VAS like OnMobile, IMI Mobile, Hungama Mobile etc. were not there! Content Developing companies VAS Application developer( one of fellow visitor asked me, “if I could suggest him any VAS content provider”)!
Nuance had big stall, and it is going to replace OnMobile ( which was principal sponsor for this VAS exhibition for last three years) as principal sponsor for next year.

Many CTI board manufacturer were there, I collected many visiting cards with interesting designations. One of the designation marketing manager of a CTI baard manufacturer’s business card reads designations like Sr. BDM Telecom and VAS ( Looks like, whole of CTI market in India is shifting towards IVR VAS only!).

Apart from Dialogic and Donjin, The following CTI board manufacturers were present :

1. Sangoma

Sangoma CTI Boards

Synway Stall at VAS Asia 2010

3. EastCom

EastCom - High Density Telecom Boards racks

4. Audio Codes

AudioCodes Stall

Interestingly, there were not many IVR platform providers except ExtendIVR and Telesoft Technologies! Telesoft launched its IVR platform for VAS industry. Aculab, I think whose CTI boards are most suited for voice portals, was not present!

ExtendIVR - Indian IVR Platform

Telesoft IVR platform

1. The session started with rosy picture of Indian VAS industry with a lecture from Mr. Arbind Rao of OnMobile ( which was the principal sponsor for the event) telling us that Indian VAS industry launches new services/products much faster than its European counterparts! He also informed that people whose mobile balance is Rs. 10(Approx US$0.22) at any point of time, VAS companies should sell them CRBT subscription per day basis! The present VAS market volume is Rs. 15000 crore ( more than US$3bn), likely to reach Rs. 70,000 crore by 2015 and Rs. 100,000 crore by 2020!
The next speaker Mr. Rakesh Mahajan, VP – Marketing & Business Head – VAS & Incubation, Airtel brought everyone on ground by asking, there are many products, services but how about the quality ? Answer to ‘what’ is not more important than ‘how’, he opined!

2. Lack of participants from core VAS companies ( though many were sponsors for the event) may be an indicator that not all is well in VAS industry in India and many admitted in private, VAS market is no longer booming in India! Nuance replacing OnMobile as principal sponsor for the next VAS Asia conference does not give out good signal about VAS Industry in India either!

3. Few specific issues like revenue sharing between telecom operator and VAS companies which is heavily tilted towards telecom companies ( Many claim it is now only 15% for VAS companies and for some unique and exclusive services it may be 35%) were not discussed or non raised, though Mr. Arbinda Rao raised something like, VAS companies should be given tax exemption by the government! No wonder low cost CTI manufacturers are present in big number in the conference!

4. Almost all speakers talked about using VAS in new areas ( eco-system as they called), like health, medicine, agriculture, targeting rural population in India. Also one speaker spoke about S Curve, saturation point!

Overall, it was good to be in the conference!

The usage of IVR is growing in India. IVR has been used for long time in India like any other country in the world. These IVR systems were majorly used as train status information, flight status information and other few complaint lodging/booking system. And at that time ( before 1997), India had very low telecom density. After telecom boom in 1999, telecom density in India has grown to over 44% by 2010. Until recently, India was adding almost 10m telephone ( both land line and mobile) users per month.

Usage of IVR has also seen growth int the same period. Also, IVR systems are being used in many new areas increasingly. In my opinion, there are four major areas where IVR is being increasingly used in India :-

1. IVR as Value Added Service
2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center
3. IVR in payment gateways
4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.

1. IVR for value added service

After mobile boom in India, SMS based VAS services saw phenomenal growth. At the same time, voice portals have also entered into the area with premium charging per minute. CRBT service can also be termed as IVR system which has become major revenue earner for mobile companies in India.
Recently, IVR is also being used as voice blasting services for product and service promotions, election campaigning, or any telephonic remainder service. Even IVR based click to call service has also started in India. I think, this is one type of IVR which has huge potential for growth in India.

2. IVR in Call Center/Contact Center

With India’s large English speaking population, BPO industry flourished after 2000 and many call centers have sprung up. With these call center, the use of outbound dialer or predictive dialer grew. Inbound IVR has been increasingly used in call center to screening the caller, providing mundane and regular information to the callers. Though call centers in India have not started very intelligent IVR yet which could be used for complete automated self service complaint management systems or any other self-help automated system.
Lately, people have been trying to integrate IVR with existing CRM software or bundle IVR with newer version of CRM software.

3. IVR in payment gateways

With major international and private banks opening shops in India, IVR has found usage in payment gateways as well as banks as Phone banking service.
IVR is also being used in payment gateways for credit card transaction using telephone. This kind of IVR needs to be PCI compliant and there have been many vendor which have developed PCI compliant IVR software. With low penetration of internet, but very high penetration of mobile phone and telephone, this type of IVR may grow healthily in recent time.

4. IVR for traditional usage like complaint management, Railway enquiry etc.
Indian Railways and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) has been oldest users of IVR in India. Indian Railways has installed many IVR systems ate individual busy stations for providing Train status information, Ticket Reservation status enquiry etc.
BSNL has been using IVR for fault and complaint booking. Apart from these two, many PSUs have been using Voice Mail systems in their PABXs.
Airlines have also been using inbound IVR for updating flight status information.

Apart from these, IVR in clinical trial has not really picked up here in India which is one of the most widely use area in other parts of the world. But there are many interesting IVR usage in India and we can be sure that some innovative IVR application will be developed by some company to exploit its huge number of telephone users!

What is IVR short code ?
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) short code can be defined as special telephone number which has ‘less’ digits in it than traditional full length telephone number. This kind of special ‘short code’ are mainly used for special purposes like customer care for telephone/mobile subscribers, VAS ( Value Added Service) access either SMS/MMS ( Short Messaging Service/Multimedia Messaging Service) or IVR based, public utility services etc.
With recent ‘VAS boom’ all around the world in telephone and mobile industry, short-code has become quite well known and many people want to ‘have’ it! While, short code is nothing but telephone number with less number of digits in it, it has become very special special as it is always associated with some special service as well as special charging for calling to it! For any VAS short code, it is charged premium while for any customer care service, it is free of charge for the caller.

Different countries have different policies about short code used for IVR access or SMS/MMS access. Normally any short-code has length of 5 digits and can have customisable suffix for specific service.

Advantages of a short-code

Short codes work as just like any telephone/mobile number. But the main advantage is, it is short so it is easy to remember.
Customer Care numbers are widely publicised by telephone companies and these short codes grow to become brand for any telecom company. Likewise, value added service providers also build their brand around the short-code for the services they provide and try to make them popular. For example, 56969 is SMS as well as IVR shortcode for Rajasthan Patrika Pvt. Ltd. in India which offers many value added SMS and IVR services through this short-code.

Apart from being short, these short-code also tend to be vanity number. For example 58888, 56969, 54321 which have some interesting pattern and easy to remember.

Sine it is short number, it is faster to dial or send SMS. Apart from advantages of being short and faster to dial, I could not think of any other advantages. Many people may think short code as vanity number and associate it with pride.

Disadvantages of Short Code

The main disadvantage of short-codes is it is completely telecom company dependent. Shortcodes are accessible within the home network only. In order to make the short-code accessible in all operators across the country, the short code needs to be configured in all the operators. For example, the short code 56969, it is registered by Rajasthan Patrika Pvt. Ltd. in all mobile operators in India in every circle. That is why it is available in all networks in India. This activity of registering the shortcode in all operators ( in India, we have more than 12 mobile operators) and the allocating software as well as hardware resources to for connectivity to each of them is quite cumbersome and time consuming affair. Most of the time, mobile operators may not allocate the desired short code or simply refuse to allocate one.

But a long code or traditional phone number is accessible by all telecom subscribers without having to register with multiple telecom operators.

Revenue Sharing
Normally, apart from the short codes used for customer care services, all other short codes are used for value added services and so charged premium. The revenue generated are shared by telecom operator and the value added service providers.

Short code for IVR
Short codes are being used IVR portals ( popularly known as voice portal) which provide many value added services or utility services. Popular TV reality shows, Contests generate lot of revenues from this kind of IVR short codes from participants. But this kind of short-code would be accessible across country and all telecom networks only when the short-code is registered with all telecom operators. This need huge initial investment in terms of hardware and software as well as recurring expenses.
So, those who do not want to invest more initially and start any IVR service quickly, they may opt for long code or normal telephone number with E1 connectivity form single operator. It may not be possible to charge callers premium and work like a VAS to generate revenue.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system itself is new in India even after decade of high telecom growth and penetration. And hosted IVR was almost unknown in India till recently. But now, few companies have come up with hosted IVR solutions to cater to few specific IVR applications.

Till now, IVR systems were thought to be standalone, on premise CTI systems for answering customer calls and transfer calls to some department, record a complaint, announce train/flight status and schedule. But with increasing telecom density, both users and telecom providers have been pushing IVR companies to provide many utility services using telephone or mobiles. For example, making payment using IVR system, listening to music on voice portal etc.

Indian IVR market seems to be now rapidly waking up to hosted IVR concept. Till few years back, not many people bothered much about VXML, CCXML. But now a days even normal IVR users are aware about these ‘jargon’. Also many US-based companies who have been using IVR for many customer service related applications, CRM applications on a hosted platform, have recently been actively looking for hosted IVR service providers in India.

There are few IVR services which are available or being implemented in India are :-

1. Voice Blast or Bulk Voice Message

After success of SMS marketing, voice SMS or bulk voice messaging was a natural graduation. In voice Message service, hosted IVR calls up telephone numbers and play a recorded message. This was widely used during election campaigns. There are few IVR companies which provide this service.

Automated dialer is another variant of outbound IVR application which is available in India as hosted IVR service.

2. Click To Call Service

Click To Call service has been in Indian market as hosted IVR service for few years now. It is widely used in trading, directory websites. Recently, travel portals, job portals and real estate websites have woken up to the usefulness of click to call service.

3. Complaint Management System

This is another application which is being used by some companies as Hosted IVR service. With reducing bandwidth cost, and increasing internet penetration, IVR based complaint management system has potential to become preferred complaint management for smaller organisations.

4. IVR Survey

There has been few instances where IVR based survey had been used in India. It is still in nascent stage, but this is one potential area. IVR survey offer many benefits over other traditional form of surveys like mailer, email, face to face, SMS etc.

So, Indian market is also moving towards hosted IVR services slowly. Though biggest IVR users in India, government sectors like Indian railways, BSNL etc. may still be using on-premise IVR systems, but smaller private sector industries like private telecom service providers, ISPs, payment gateway providers, hospitality industry may opt for hosted IVR service quickly.

Few of the hosted IVR service providers are, Niche Tech Services Private Ltd., Simmortel Voice, Phonon, etc.

Voice portal services in India are one of the most successful VAS ( Value Added Service) in terms of revenue generation. Voice portal is steadily growing in India. Voice Portal operators like OnMobile, One97, Cellebrum ( Now Spice Digital), IMI Mbile, Rajasthan Patrika, etc. are few players who are spearheading the voice portal growth in India. Presently, voice portal services in India normally work on a “short code” ( short dialing number for users) and ‘users-pay-per-minute-of-usage’ basis.

Voice portal is set to continue growing in near future despite its high cost to users ( ( Rs. 6 per minute, while normal voice call in India is now as low as 45 paise per minute). It is also expected that the price will come down with introduction of subscription model, where voice portal users subscribe to its service and can avail at much lower rate that Rs. 6 per minute.

Here are few reasons why it will grow in India :-

1. It does not require any learning for usage unlike SMS/MMS service.

To use voice portal services, one does not have to learn or know anything new with his mobile phone. Anyone who can dial using a mobile phone can start using voice portal. While to use, SMS, one has to learn writing in English, English language, typing using Mobile keypad etc. Using MMS service are more cumbersome as one has to get a GPRS high end phone, GPRS activated from mobile service provider etc.

Voice portal provides simple voice based menus to choose where one has to just speak or press telephone keys. So, users does not have to learn anything to start using voice portal services.

2. Large number of Languages and speakers

India has more than 2500 dialects and 22 recognised languages. It is not easy to deliver information or content in these languages through SMS/MMS or even computer. IVR offers unique medium to offer content, information in voice using their mother tongue to all masses.

Voice portals using vernacular languages offers unique advantages of availing any information in voice in their own language by its users.

3. Using voice portal is easy

Voice portal is normally easy to use as it provides one option at a time in voice. It can offer one service in one number. One does not have to remember Keywords as in SMS portal for different services. It is also easier to download widely popular Ring Tone using a voice portal than SMS portal as one can listen to Ring Tone preview before downloading.

4. Large rural and illiterate population

India has large rural population and large population which are illiterate. So, providing information to them using computer, news papers etc may not be as useful as it is for illiterate people. Voice portal can be used effectively for these disadvantaged people for providing information in voice in their native languages.

It is not difficult to build many voice contents specifically for rural people. So, voice portal can grow to be preferred content delivery platform for rural population in India.

5. Some contents are better presented using voice portal

There are few contents which are presented better using an IVR or voice portal. For example music. One may listen to music on IVR only, not using SMS!

Likewise, contests with large questions with multiple options are easier to play on IVR that SMS. So, usage of voice portal is bound to grow in near future in India.

High cost of voice portal access may be one barrier which may hinder its growth. But with more competition as well as private voice portal with specific service in the menu, one can expect the price to come down for everyone to be able to access voice portal service.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) System is solution that perform specific tasks related to presenting, sharing gathering information of a company with its customers or any one over phone. With fast development of internet, IVR systems too have moved from on-premise system to hosted service.

How it evolved
Like any other computer software, IVR has evolved from standalone application to highly networked application with many intelligence as per industry where it is being used. For example, a typical voice portal application fetches data from many different servers located at various geographical locations. The main CTI server is normally located at telecom service provider while all contents, MIS etc are contactly updated, monitored from office of the voice portal operators, all using internet as backbone.
Similarly, other IVR applications like complaint management, company information, IVR survey, hotel information etc. could be hosted at remote sites and its activities, reports could be viewed, analyzed live using internet connection or on website. So, IVR as a hosted service has evolved and is growing.

How it works

Hosted IVR service providers offers the following services to its customer:-

1. Dedicated Telephone number which will receive calls from/make calls to its customers.
2. DIY ( Do it yourself) visual tools for designing their IVR call flow
3. Third party database integration or integration with existing CRM ( Customer Resource Management) software.
4. Any customised call flow implementation
5. Maintenance, upgrade of the IVR system.

A hosted IVR service provider has infrastructure which is already connected to telecom operators for managing telephone call related activities as well as integration of CTI boards with telephone switch, call routing. It also has CDR MIS available online for any customers for their allotted telephone numbers or channel(s). It can allocate more channels to handle more calls simultaneously.

A hosted IVR customer only need to worry about their application part, their call flow, IVR prompts, script etc.

Advantages

• People who are not convinced about success of IVR implementation or its usefulness for his business process, using hosted IVR service is the best option. As hosted IVR service offers him quickest time for go live with an IVR system.
• Initial cost of CTI board, time spent on integration with telephone switch etc. are avoided while using a hosted IVR service.

Available tools
There are many tools which can be used for hosted IVR services. Invox, Apexvoice, Pronexus VBVoice, CT ADE etc. are few tools which are widely used for hosted IVR service.

Hosted IVR has started in India in the form of Bulk outbound voice messages recently which is being increasingly used for political campaign, awareness campaign, e-governance as well as voice advertising. “Click to Call” is another hosted IVR service which is growing in India recently.

Happy holidays season and Happy New year 2010 to all readers in general and visitors to IVR Blog during this holiday season in particular.

In case you wanted to read few useful articles about interactive voice response (IVR) system, here is a list of recommended articles :-

1. IVR as CRBT(Caller Ring Back Tone).
2. Choosing a CTI board for your IVR.
3. Choosing right IVR development tool .
4. Usability Tips for IVR Software.
5. Predictive Dialer and IVR.
6. Using Predictive Dialer smartly in Call Center.
7. List of RAD tools for IVR development.
8. IVR for making money .
9. Technical challenges in voice portal.
10. Use IVR as e-commerce portal.

I hope these articles will keep you busy while I will be back next year, 2010!