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iLink– Spring, 2004
iLink — Spring, 2004 Newsletter
Your
Source for Call Center and IVR Solutions for the iSeries
Table
of Contents
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| If
you are interested in obtaining more
details about any of the products or
information contained in iLink,
please contact
us. We are interested in your comments
and suggestions and would like to incorporate
them in future issues of iLink. |
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iVoice
Keeps Allied Beverage's Orders Flowing
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 Allied
Beverage Group, Inc., of Carlstadt, NJ, has been using
interactive voice response technology to allow service
order entry from their field salesmen for many years
now. Keeping their almost-15-year-old Missing Link
ML/5250 40-line system alive was not a possibility.
Although the ML/5250 system performed the needed tasks,
it operated on older DOS-based technology, and the
hardware that it ran on was breaking down and becoming
increasingly difficult and costly to replace. When
it was time to upgrade the Missing Link system, a few
options were investigated. One was to invest in a wireless
system that would give each of Allied's 200+ salesmen
a PDA through which they could enter orders. This system
was determined to be much costlier and more limiting
than expected.
The
PDA system didn't meet Allied Beverage's needs for
a number of reasons. At the time they were considering
the system, PDAs and wireless modems would have had
to be purchased for each salesman. Additional costs
on top of the PDAs and modems were a new server,
software and the airtime for the PDAs to communicate
with the server.
Vern
Koppenhaver, Allied Beverage's IS Director, researched
their options further. After seeing Don Rima's December,
2002 Honor Roll review on iVoice in the eserver Magazine
iSeries Edition, Koppenhaver contacted iMessaging
Systems, Inc. It was determined that upgrading to
iVoice, instead of utilizing the PDA system, would
meet the order-servicing needs of the salesmen at
an expense of one-third what the PDAs alone, without
the server, software or airtime, would have cost.
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Vern
Koppenhaver
IS Director
Allied Beverage Group
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Koppenhaver
stated that the upgrade to iVoice was "the easiest
thing I ever did!" The new system was set up
to perform the same functions as the old system,
except that now the salesmen would be directed into
one of three separate ordering programs, depending
on the type of order they needed to enter. Allied
Beverage has the option and flexibility of adding
a fourth ordering program into the system if the
need arises. In fact, with iVoice, Allied Beverage
maintains complete control over all IVR applications
and has the ability to expand the functions of their
IVR system without the need to rely on iMessaging
Systems. "iVoice provides an IVR platform and
development environment that gives complete control
to AS/400 shops to program in native languages like
RPG," notes Rich Ollari of iMessaging. "Our
customers love the flexibility and control this design
offers." Koppenhaver noted that if Allied Beverage
had gone with the PDA system, whenever a programming
change was needed they would have had to call the
manufacturer, put in a work order, wait for the revisions
to be made and pay for the modifications. With iVoice,
Allied Beverage can make programming modifications
whenever they are necessary, at no additional charge.
One
of the major hurdles of the iVoice upgrade was converting
Allied Beverage's existing RPG II programming on
the ML/5250 to RPG/ILE for use in the iVoice environment.
Koppenhaver and his staff didn't have the time to
dedicate to the conversion, so Allied Beverage contracted
iMessaging to do the conversion in addition to the
installation. "I was very pleased with the conversion
of our old program. It was a seamless transition
thanks to iMessaging's programming services," comments
Koppenhaver.
Once
the programming conversion was completed, iMessaging's
staff went on site to service the physical installation
of the iVoice system and perform system testing and
training. "Originally, iMessaging estimated
three days for setup, testing and training. I thought
they were crazy – that's not much time
at all," said Koppenhaver. "On the second
day, the system was up and running. I'm still shocked!" According
to Koppenhaver, the only needed modification to the
system was to add pauses to the entered data and
operating commands that are read back to the salesmen.
 The
two 24-line iVoice systems (with a 3rd iVoice system
as a backup) were installed in the fall of 2003,
right at the beginning of Allied Beverage's busy
holiday season. "The system performed like a
charm," remembers Koppenhaver. "Many afternoons
between 2 and 4 p.m., all 48 lines were going continuously.
The system ran without so much as a hiccup!" In
fact, Koppenhaver estimates that, during that quarter,
the system was handling 3000 to 4000 orders per day.
Allied Beverage's typical off-peak daily volume is
2000 orders.
The
salesmen have commented that they prefer the new,
programmed voice much better than the recorded voice
of Koppenhaver on their old ML/5250 system. The iVoice
speech is much quicker, smoother and easier to understand.
Koppenhaver mentioned that when the system first
went live, they left some lines on the ML/5250 system,
so some of the salesmen would get Koppenhaver's voice
on the old system. Many jokingly told Koppenhaver
that they hung up and dialed in again until they
got the iVoice system!
Koppenhaver
noted that iVoice offers additional capabilities
that Allied Beverage isn't taking advantage of because
of limitations to their internal communications structure.
One such feature is automatic call routing to the
credit department if a salesman is delinquent. Another
feature is integration with Allied Beverage's inventory
database so the salesmen can receive real-time inventory
counts.
Koppenhaver
couldn't project an ROI for their iVoice system,
but he feels that the system will more than pay for
itself within the year. "We couldn't operate
without it. To afford to hire the staff to do what
iVoice does would be impossible! Besides, if an order
is entered incorrectly, the salesmen have no one
to blame but themselves!"
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Account
Manager: Your Liaison to all that is iMessaging
Systems!
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In
2002, we announced it! In 2003, we refined it!
This year, we’ll hone it!
As
you may recall, the goal of our Account Management
program is to continually strengthen the link
to each of our customers. We hope that you
have been impressed by the hard work that your
Account Manager has done to improve communications
between iMessaging Systems and you. Your Account
Manager is your one-stop contact point to ensure
timely response to all inquiries to iMessaging
Systems. He or she is your personal liaison
to all that is iMessaging!
Of
course, for technical support issues you should
continue to contact our support team at 603-424-7788
or support@imessagingsystems.com.
If you have not yet been contacted by your
Account Manager, please send an email to info@imessagingsystems.com,
and we will be sure to get back to you promptly.
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iMessaging
Set for Exciting New Product Announcements |
 On
May 3, 2004, at COMMON's conference in San Antonio,
Texas, iMessaging will be announcing a significant
advancement to our iVoice™ telephony solution
that will enhance call-handling efficiency. The
new product offering will be beneficial to any
iSeries 400 client with an interest in improving
the experience of incoming callers who need to
speak to a live person, agent or customer support
representative.
Shortly
before the official announcement at COMMON,
all iMessaging Systems customers will receive
complete details by email. Following the event,
a general email distribution containing the
complete press release will be provided to
all iLINK subscribers.
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We
are proud to announce that iVoice™, Interactive
Voice Response for the iSeries (AS/400), has obtained
ServerProven certification from IBM. The recognition
of iVoice™ as ServerProven provides customers
with the assurance that "Big Blue" has
validated iVoice™'s operation and performance
on the iSeries platform. Read
More...
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Improving
Recognition Results When Using Automatic
Speech Recognition
While
ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) represents
a dramatic improvement over the touchtone method
of data input for IVR (Interactive Voice Response),
it remains an evolving technology in the relatively
early stages of its development. The goal, of
course, is to continually improve the reliability
of recognition so that the caller experience
is as natural and interactive as possible. To
this end, most ASR systems employ certain techniques
that have been designed to improve reliability.
Context
Model Design for Speech Recognition
One of the most effective techniques in use today is the "context" model.
In this situation, the ASR engine is instructed to expect a certain
set of vocal utterances or vocabularies, and the engine filters
spoken responses against the vocabulary to capture the information
that it is expecting. Examples of the "context" recognition
model are "Boolean," "Digits" and "Item
List." These three contexts expect certain words to be spoken
as part of the response. For example, Boolean logic is expecting
a "yes" or "no" response. If a word that is
completely foreign or unexpected, such as "elephant",
is spoken, ASR will analyze it and return the closest response
it has to "elephant." Because it was not expecting the
word "elephant", it would return either "yes" or "no." depending
on what it thinks is the closest fit.
It
is important to point out that the ASR engine
is constantly working to refine and improve its
recognition rates, based on the speech patterns
of the callers. Therefore, unexpected responses,
especially responses that are completely unrelated
to the question, will negatively affect the recognition
rates and degrade the system’s ability
to improve recognition over time.
Recognizing
Digits
In situations involving digit recognition, there are several other
things to consider. First off, if you expect the full number of
digits (@RMIN and @RMAX are set to the same value), the ASR engine
will not return a partial response if the caller only speaks a
few digits of an account number. This is because the ASR engine
cannot give a complete answer. If you want the ability to accept
a partial answer, you should set @RMIN to 1 and @RMAX to the maximum
number of digits you are collecting. Then, if the party stops speaking
without completing the full answer, iVoice will collect the partial
response. In this case, iVoice will provide a return code of "OKAY," rather
than "TIMEOUT," and the AS/400 program will need to check
the "@NDGT" variable to see how many digits the caller
provided.
Another
consideration with regard to speech recognition
and partial numeric responses is the sound of
other words that may be spoken. For example,
if you would like to collect a number using "Digits" recognition,
and the caller says something like "1 3
5 4 – Oh, I don't know," you will
get unexpected results. The speaking of "Oh,
I don't know" may result in one or two extra
zeros being added to the end of the number returned
to the AS/400. This is because "Oh" is
set up as a synonym for zero on the "Digits" context
in the ASR engine. As a result, the system may
pick up the long 'o' sound in the words "Oh" and "know."
Improving
Recognition by Using the iVoice Confidence
Rating Variable
Because of situations such as those described above, methods are
needed to improve recognition rates and to allow the IVR application
developer to have more control over the spoken response and its
accuracy. As a result of this need, the "confidence rating" value
calculated by the ASR engine has been incorporated into the iVoice
system (version 2.03.0). Typically represented by a number, the
confidence rating indicates the ASR engine’s confidence with
the answer that it is passing back to the AS/400. In the case of
iVoice, confidence ratings of 1 to 999 are supported, where 1 is
very low, and 999 means that the ASR engine is very sure that it
has collected the answer properly. More specifically, the iVoice
iRECOGNIZE data structure includes a three-digit variable called
@RCLVL that is passed to the AS/400 and contains the confidence
rating. With the use of the Confidence Rating Variable, the iVoice
application developer decides what rating is adequate to accept
the response, and when the caller should be asked to "try
again."
The
use of Speech Recognition has the ability to
vastly improve the interactive quality and ease-of-use
of the iVoice system, but the process of application
design and error handling is far more complex.
Taking the time to carefully consider the proper
use of ASR and the variety of responses you will
receive is time consuming, but the result will
be a system that provides a more natural and
conversational self-service tool for your callers.
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