Voxeo Talks

Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Voxeo CXP 13, the first and only product on the market today that provides a single platform to build, deploy, analyze and manage customer self-service applications across multiple channels, including voice, text, mobile web and social media. Voxeo CXP 13 was recently selected by a panel of prestigious industry judges as the winner of “Best of Enterprise Connect,” which recognizes products that have made significant technological advancements within the enterprise communications industry.

CXP 13 gives businesses the tools they need to meet and exceed ever-increasing customer expectations, with a “design once, deploy anywhere” architecture that enables application lifecycle management across multiple inbound self-service and outbound communications channels. Mobility is a core capability of Voxeo CXP, as is the ability to integrate with APIs such as location-based services to offer a richer and more personalized customer experience.

Voxeo CXP 13 enhancements include:

• Dedicated channel views and channel-specific object browsing, enabling developers to focus on one communication channel at a time
• An integrated HTML5 code editor
• Embedded widget objects for building web forms
• An embedded device simulator that renders the HTML code to show the look and feel of applications
• Easy testing of mobile web apps via QR codes and flexible application preview in selected screen dimensions
• Integration with Google Analytics, including reports on device and browser types, as well as customer behaviors and demographics

Voxeo CXP also offers:

• Hotspot Analytics right inside the integrated development environment, making it easier than ever for developers to make application changes based on production data that was previously only available deep inside business user and administrator reports. By uniquely highlighting data and Key Performance Indicators within the application dialog flow, developers can quickly spot potential areas for improvement and take immediate action to optimize self-service.
• An enhanced Business User Interface that provides non-technical business the ability to change and update components of live applications instantly, without involving an application developer or system administrator. Configurable parameters are determined by the developer and controlled by business rules. Common examples include managing hours of operation and call routes related to call transfers from your IVR, customizing messages, adding special announcements or marketing campaigns to your web apps, deactivating menu items in your IVR, two-way SMS, or web app, etc.

Voxeo CXP can be deployed on premise or in Voxeo’s global cloud. Anyone can try Voxeo CXP for free at www.voxeo.com/free with full access to Voxeo’s 24/7/365 technical support.

Back in 2007, analyst firm Gartner named Voxeo to their “Cool Vendors in Enterprise Communications” list – recognizing five companies that would have an impact on the future of enterprise communications, using a three-pronged test of “Innovative, impactful and intriguing.” Voxeo was recognized for our commitment to standards, the ease of creating voice applications and availability of cloud hosting options.

In the last six years, we’ve built on that foundation: we’ve retained our commitment to building solutions on open standards and making application development and hosting easy, while our developer community has grown by a multiple of ten, our offerings have expanded from IVR to multi-channel customer experience offerings across voice, text, mobile and social channels.

Why are we bringing up 2007? In Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Unified Communications and Network Systems and Services, 2013″ report released last week, Gartner’s Bern Elliot revisited Voxeo in a “Where Are They Now?” segment. In addition to how our approach dramatically cuts voice application development costs while improving flexibility, they took a look at where we are today, recognizing our continuing success in the IVR market and our evolution into sophisticated offerings like IM, mobile web, SMS, social media, video and mobile apps, as well as our strong customer satisfaction ratings.

We took a look at the rest of our peer-set from that 2007 report, as well. Iotum has moved on from offering their Relevance Engine product to focus on the mobile conferencing market with Calliflower; Woven Systems’ assets were acquired by Fortinet; Lifesize was acquired by Logitech; and Litescape is continuing to provide UC solutions.

Being “innovative, impactful and engaging” is definitely in line with Voxeo’s culture, and we’re thrilled that it has consistently shown in our products, our solutions and the vitality of our developer community.

Voxeo CXP is a sophisticated product that has helped hundreds of customers and half of the Fortune 500 improve their phone-based customer self-service and call routing. It is known for covering the entire lifecycle of application management, with tools for application design, development, documentation, deployment, management, reporting, and analytics. What is less known is the APIs that sit at the core of its engine, CXP Server, which prompted our EMEA VP Engineering, Stefan Besling, to recently write a great blog post about this topic as well: It’s the API, stupid! I would like to elaborate on some of the examples he has given.

The SOAP-based Web Services API (documentation), a REST version for a subset of functions, and our XML-based SDK (the CXP XDK: documentation) are the foundation of the majority of tools that make CXP what it is, among them:

• CXP Developer, the GUI and service creation & administration environment
• Storyboard Manager, the prompt management tool based on MS Excel
• CXP Commander, the graphical dashboard that sits in CXP Developer for service deployment, session partitioning, log/trace file management, etc.
• CXP Analyzer, the reporting & analytics suite

The CXP XDK exposes the full power of multi-channel application lifecycle management via an open, well-documented XML-based development kit. The XDK enables developers to use a coding environment of their choice, from simple editors like Notepad or vi, to enterprise-grade authoring and deployment environments like Eclipse, SAP NetWeaver Studio, or IBM WebSphere Studio, while still retaining full access to the object-oriented design approach taken by Voxeo CXP.

At the heart of the XDK stands CXPML (CXP Markup Language: documentation), an XML-based application markup language. It sits on top of open standards such as VoiceXML for IVR or XHTML for Web apps, and provides a clear abstraction layer for truly unified multi-channel applications. Furthermore, it provides all the powerful capabilities built into the patented object technology of Voxeo CXP, such as a true object-oriented development approach and inheritance.

Oftentimes, our customers and partners mistake CXP Developer, the Eclipse-based IDE coming with the product, for what CXP is all about. The opposite is actually true: CXP Developer is NOT a representation of what Voxeo CXP is about, it is merely one (our) implementation of a GUI sitting on top of our APIs and exposing the power of CXP Server, the brain of the product. Using the Web Service API and XDK, you can in fact create your very own service creation and administration front-end. Several examples exist, such as SAP’s Netweaver Voice, that OEMs CXP Server but comes with its own GUI. Another one would be our very own Business User Interface, a Web-based front-end for non-technical staff to manage aspects of your IVR or multi-channel applications. (Read more in our BUI flyer.)

Voxeo CXP and its powerful CXP Server are truly more of a middleware that you can embed seamlessly in your enterprise service frameworks and processes. Furthermore, Service Providers use it to offer value-added services to enterprise clients. A lot of the applications built on top of the Voxeo CXP middleware are around what Gartner calls Communications-Enabled Business Processes, or CEBP – a prime example of an application type that benefits from APIs.

Let me give you some concrete examples of the APIs.

• You would like to deploy CXP applications directly from XML files maintained in a version-control system used in your IT department? Go ahead, you can: deployXDKService (sessionID, serverRefID, serviceDef, isURI).
• Or you prefer deploying your apps directly from a different system, in a “volatile” fashion based on a single XML parameter representing your application logic? The WS API allows that, too (same method, with isURI=false and serviceDef being the CXPML string representing your application logic).
• You would like to embed a dashboard of CXP status information, such as a count of current callers into your system, directly into an existing Web-based front-end that you use for other applications? Easy: queryServer (sessionID, serverRefID, aggregateData).

As a matter of fact, one of our bigger customers, a large multi-national retailer, has done just that: They embed CXP-related data in a general dashboard of application (not just IVR) status and deployment features, that they had in place before they standardized on Voxeo for their IVR applications. A service provider customer of ours uses our APIs to streamline the deployment process across their multi-data-center setup of Voxeo CXP, now being able to deploy without touching any of our own tools – the process of bringing a new application version to production can be done completely from within their existing depoyment framework.

Developers often face tedious tasks such as batch creation of dialog objects, renaming operations, etc. CXP Developer does not have pre-built functions in the GUI for all of these tasks. However, using our APIs, a simple export of your application, coupled with an XML modification script in a scripting language of your choice, and a re-import, does the job:

1. exportProjectVersion (sessionID, projectName, versionName, format, zipped, exportLib)
2. …your XML string manipulation…
3. importObject (sessionID, projectName, versionName, generateNewGUIDs, overwriteByName, objectDef, isURI)

A lot of the API revolves around security: restricting access to who can see and do what (projects, deployed applications, sites in a multi-tenant environent, etc.), exploiting CXP’s built-in user management features, tracking user access, killing connections, locking down access to certain areas of an application etc.

I could go on and on, but I believe you get the message, and hopefully some ideas around how to use our product more efficiently for your own deployments: Voxeo CXP offers rich and powerful APIs to be truly embedded as middleware into your existing systems and processes to add feature-rich communications applications to your business, be it for self-service offerings to your customers or employees, or to enrich business processes with voice, SMS, or mobile applications to improve efficiency.

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Are you attending Net.Finance – April 30th – May 2nd at The Wigwam hotel in Phoenix?

The three day show is packed with over fifty sessions and over sixty financial services speakers. The themes for the show include:

• Mobile Channel Focus
• Multi-Channel Strategy & Customer Engagement
• Bank 3.0 & The Future Of Financial Services

As a proud sponsor of Net.Finance, Voxeo will be in attendance, along with our Master Reseller partner Waterfield Technologies, to discuss multi-modal customer service solutions for the financial industry.  If you are attending the show, please visit our booth!

The Washington Post asked last week, “Can Silicon Valley re-invent customer service?” The article accurately summarizes the massive shift in how companies offer customer service – with contact centers and live agents now being supplemented with a variety of different self service options between the customer and the live agent: crowd-sourced customer service forums, auto-responding “bots”, or “freemium” models where access to live agents becomes a premium offering – with some companies going so far as to even abolish 1-800 number for toll-free customer service.

But instead of railing against this model that moves away from live agents, they’re embracing the potential for technology to make self-service a viable option, not just when something goes wrong, but to improve the customer experience as a whole – particularly when utilizing the unique capabilities provided by now-ubiquitous mobile devices:

Most importantly, our mobile devices have become an extraordinarily powerful tool to bridge the customer service gap. And it goes beyond just using tablets to check in customers quickly for events. For example, new geofencing technology makes it possible to recognize when a user enters or leaves a specific geolocation and could be used to ensure that any customer entering a retail location is treated just like a long-time, valuable customer.

It may be true that customer expectations have changed so that any human interaction in the customer service process surprises us to the upside – but there’s an opportunity to improve upon that. The new layers of self-service technology should actually be increasing our expectations for the entire customer experience, not just in terms of problem-solving, but in the ability to provide a personalized, proactive customer experience that delights and retains customers.

The Washington Post article calls on Silicon Valley to help, but we think that customer service is already being reinvented here at Voxeo. Our platform enables companies to provide innovative self-service that utilizes inbound and outbound IVR, SMS, mobile applications and enhancements like location-based services:

The technology that supports a multi-modal experience that enhances the customer’s experience at every step of their journey already exists – and companies from Silicon Valley to Main Street USA are deploying it.

How is your company preparing for this shift in technology and the corresponding ability to reinvent the entire customer experience? Let us know in the comments!

Are you attending IBM Impact – April 28-May 2 at the Venetian and Palazzo hotels in Las Vegas?

The theme for the show is an exploration of the many ways technology can drive innovation and growth:

From their website:

Impact 2013 is designed for IT and business leaders who understand that to lead in today’s economy, outperforming organizations are especially focused on combining technology with the business to drive innovation and growth. They understand that to succeed – they have to leverage Mobile, Social, Cloud and Big Data and re-imagine their operations, their processes, and their technology.

As an IBM Alliance Partner, Voxeo will be in attendance at IBM Impact. Voxeo’s Tobias Goebel will also be speaking about automated communications technology in the cloud. If you are attending the show, please visit us at our booth in the Solution Center and check out Tobias’ presentation!

Last year, we produced a tour of our US headquarters in Orlando – check it out here if you haven’t! We couldn’t let our US team have all the fun, though. In this video, Voxeo’s Sabine Winterkamp leads a tour of our new office space in Cologne, Germany, and you’ll see and hear from our European team: