Archive for December, 2009

Haunted by ghosts of IVRs past?

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

It’s a story that’s familiar to too many. A company buys a “standards-based” IVR solution only to find themselves shackled by inflexibility, paying for difficult integrations, piecing together technologies, and waiting for promised functionality to be delivered. Worse, they bought a “standards-based” IVR and found themselves locked in. 

If you’re looking for a new or replacement IVR in 2010 and value the true meaning of open standards and portability, be sure to ask these questions:

Does the vendor use proprietary, non-standard XML and/or proprietary features that will lock you in?

Are proprietary development tools being used to lock you in?

Does the platform support more than one speech engine?

Does the platform provide a consistent offering across multiple regions of the world?

Does the vendor offer the flexibility of a hosted or on-premise solution, with the ability to easily migrate from one to the other or use a combination of the two?

Does the platform only support legacy TDM telephony?

—Does the application platform only support voice self-service?

Many vendors are using proprietary features and application development tools to create a new era of IVR lock-in.  At Voxeo, we choose to keep our customers by providing them with a better product and better support – never by locking them in. Our solutions are designed to ease application development, assure interoperability, facilitate innovation, and destroy vendor lock-in.

  • Voxeo Prophecy remains the only platform to pass 100% of the VoiceXML Forum compliance test suite. Additionally, we offer the world’s most deployed and proven CCMXL engine, and deliver a scalable SIP server foundation that is compliant with over 30 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) SIP standards.
  • The same platform behind our global IVR hosting – the largest worldwide VoiceXML and CCXML hosting solution – is offered for on-premise deployment. Customers are free to use a combination of deployment models or move between platforms should requirements change. 
  • Voxeo provides a consistent global solution with support for multi-lingual applications and multiple speech engines.
  • With Voxeo, you own your application and are free to deploy it on non-Voxeo platforms for any reason, at any time. Voxeo Prophecy features compatibility modes that make porting VoiceXML IVR applications as easy as changing a single Prophecy setting.
  • Voxeo’s VoiceObjects service creation, management, and analytics platform enables customers to build applications once and deploy them on over 30 different VoiceXML platforms.
  • Prophecy works with SIP platforms and services from AT&T, Avaya, Cisco, Digium/Asterisk, Global Crossing, Nortel, Verizon, and over 40 other companies. This foundation bridges diverse SIP services and devices, eases integration with IP-PBX and call center investments, and lowers the cost of connecting and transferring calls with direct IP connectivity.
  • Voxeo enables customers to leverage their IVR investments, application code, and business logic to deliver self-service via additional channels, such as SMS, IM, the mobile web, and even social networking sites like Twitter.

If you’re planning to look at IVR solutions in 2010, be sure to take a look at Voxeo. We’d love to talk. Also, you can instantly get started with any of our solutions for free. We even provide free 24/7 developer support.


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Navigate the holiday traffic with 511 IVR

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Last minute shopping trips, family gatherings, and out-of-town visitors. All contribute to the holiday rush that puts drivers in a less-than-cheery mood. This season avoid traffic backups and other problem areas with 511.

511 is the nationally designated abbreviated dialing code for real-time travel information. Callers can get instant updates on road construction, traffic, weather conditions, and more. It’s a free service that’s currently available to more than 70% of the U.S. population. 511 leverages interactive voice response (IVR) and speech recognition to provide drivers with anytime, “hands-free” access to information. If you find yourself in a jam this holiday season or want an update before hitting the road, give 511 a call. 

Voxeo partner, PBS&J, delivers Voxeo-powered 511 systems in Virginia and North Carolina. PBS&J provides reliable 511 IVR services – even during the holidays when traffic and weather conditions trigger huge fluctuations in call volume. The Voxeo-powered solution ensures PBS&J clients have high availability, on-demand scalability, and cost-effective bursting during usage spikes. Learn more about 511, PBS&J, and Voxeo in our new case study.


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Voxeo partners with ICR to provide automated multi-channel customer interaction in the UK

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Voxe and ICR partner to provide customers with a wide range of applications addressing voice, mobile web, 2-way SMS and IM contact centre self-service. The partnership brings together technical excellence, an industry leading development and testing environment, robust deployment and superb Instant Messaging (IM) capabilities. Read the full story.


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Soak up Some Sunshine with Voxeo at IT Expo in SOBE

Monday, December 14th, 2009

A few of Voxeo’s finest will be soaking up some sunshine in SOBE (SOuth BEach), Miami on January 20 – 22, 2010.  CTO RJ Auburn, Director of Conversations Dan York, as well as VP of Innovation Jason Goecke will be participating at IT Expo East and the inaugural one day workshop called The Cloud Communications Show held at the Miami Beach Convention Center.  Their sessions are:

RJ Auburn

IT Expo Conference: 1/21/2010, 2:00-2:45pm

“Value in the Clouds: The Evolution of the Telephone Industry”

With tremendous pressure on businesses and telephone companies of all sizes to generate new revenue without new capital or operational spending, hosted application opportunities are moving to the forefront of the communications arena. To fully leverage current opportunities in this fast-paced market, market participants need to first understand past and current computing models as well as the evolution of service providers beyond owning networks and selling basic voice offering. This session will discuss the evolution of the telco to more than merely a dial tone provider, the different telco models in existence today, and the new revenue potential of today’s telecom market.

Participating companies

Ifbyphone

CallFire

Voxeo Corporation

Dan York

The Cloud Communications Show: 1/20/2010

“Cloud Telephony for the Enterprise”

This session discusses tradeoffs in deploying communications applications behind the firewall, with a hosted partner or through elastic mechanisms such as Amazon’s EC2.

Other speakers planned for this session are Troy Davis, CEO of CloudVox, and Evan Cooke, Co-Founder and CTO of Twilio.  Thomas Howe will moderate the session.

Jason Goecke

The Cloud Communications Show: 1/20/2010

“Introduction to Voice Mashups: An introduction to the concept and architecture of using voice as part of modern web-based applications.”

Concrete voice mashup examples will be demonstrated, along with the business cases that support them.

Jason Goecke will be speaking, other speakers planned for this session are David Troy, Founder of Roundhouse Technologies, Jay Phillips, Founder of Adhearsion, and Joe Developer.  Thomas Howe will moderate the session.

If you are planning to attend IT Expo East in Miami or are in the area and would like to coordinate a meeting with RJ, Dan and/or Jason drop us a note!


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Voxeo partners with Remego to unlock contact centers in APAC Region

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Voxeo, leading provider of unlocked communications and Remego, provider of premier services of customized, high capacity Interactive Voice response (IVR) telecommunication and call centre services partner in the Asia Pacific region.

Customers that choose the joint offer from Voxeo and Remego will have lower lower costs for implementation, ongoing operations and maintance as well as better analytical options to understand customer behavior. Additionally they are able to use a rich set of interaction capabilities including the capability to have one applicationwork across voice, SMS, IM and mobile web. Read more about this.


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Introducing Adam Kalsey as Manager, Voxeo Developer Network…

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

I am delighted to announce that Adam Kalsey has joined Voxeo’s communications team as “Manager, Voxeo Developers Network” to focus on communication with and outreach to our strong developer community. Adam was one of the co-founders of IMified and joined Voxeo as part of the IMified acquisition back in May 2009. (You can even watch Adam on video.)

With a passion not just for coding but also for products and customers, Adam agreed to leave our engineering team and come over “to the dark side” of marketing to help developers more easily build applications on our platforms and to engage in conversations with developers around what they want to see in our platforms. He’ll be actively expanding the amount of information we have online and also speaking at and attending various conferences and events. You can expect to see him blogging here and also over on Voxeo Developers Corner, the IMified blog, the Tropo blog and probably a couple of our other blogs. He also maintains his own blog and is quite active on Twitter as @akalsey.

Over 100,000 developers have created applications on our platforms and more are signing up each day. Adam’s now the point person on my team to help existing developers learn about more they can do with Voxeo platforms, to help the larger developer community learn about how the can rapidly build communications applications on our cloud-based and premise platforms, and to help bring back to our internal teams information about how we can make our platforms even more simple, easy, yet powerful for you all to use for building applications.

Please join me in welcoming Adam… developers, he’s now here for you… you can reach him at:

Email: akalsey@voxeo.com
Skype: akalsey
Twitter: @akalsey
Jabber/XMPP: adam@kalsey.com
AIM: akalsey


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Our annual customer survey is out in the field…

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

voxeologo-2009.jpgIn case you haven’t noticed, we’re rather obsessed with serving our customers and helping them grow. In fact, “Customer Obsession” is literally one of our core values. Our goal is to earn your business for life and that ethic infuses every part of our operations.

And so it is that every year at this time, we send out a survey to all of our customers asking them to tell us how we’re doing… what they like… what they dislike… how we can help them better service their customers, etc. We want to know… no… we need to know! It’s in our DNA to not only provide an extraordinary level of customer service… but to see how we can make it even more extraordinary.

So if you are a commercial customer of ours, take a look in your email inbox… or contact your Account Manager if you can’t find the email. We want to hear from you!


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.


Upcoming Jam Session: Introducing VoiceObjects 9.1

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Our next Jam Session is scheduled for Wednesday of next week,  December 09th.

Stefan Besling, VP Engineering at Voxeo Germany will give you a preview  of VoiceObjects 9.1 and the new functionalities of this version.

This new release of Voxeo´s leading VoiceObjects technology will provide a range of new functionalities such as

 - a brand new Database object to easily access and manipulate backend data

 - a “simple mode” in the Connector object for cases in which less is more

 - enhancements on the Menu object for dynamic personalization

 - Control Center Reports

und more.

Register now for this Jam Session on December 09th, 2009.


Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

If you found this post interesting or helpful, please consider either subscribing via RSS, becoming a fan on Facebook, or following us on Twitter.