voice notification system - voice alert with XML

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VoiceShot Customer Service
VoiceShot Deploys its Version 4.x API In-house to Improve Customer Service and Reduce Costs

CASE STUDY

VoiceShot is an online call center that offers services such as Web based voice mail broadcasting, virtual office phone systems, virtual receptionist and enhanced toll free services as well as voice services through XML.

Background - The Problem
VoiceShot's customer service department handles customer service requests for all of its products, including outbound calling, inbound calling and developer products as well as integration projects.

Like any company, as we grow we are always searching for better ways to services our customers and reduce costs. That search spans the entire spectrum of products and services available from both large and small vendors alike. In our ongoing search for quality solutions that reduce our customer service costs, we saw a unique opportunity to put our own technology to work to provide this solution.

The Solution
We realized that VoiceShot's version 4.x API could provide the perfect customer relationship management solution for our own customer serivce department. It provides us an automated way to look up a customer's account information on the fly during a customer service call prior to the customer being connected with a support representative. We completely eliminate the time required for the support representative to look up the customer's information, as well as display the customer's information to the support representative prior to connecting them to the customer. When the support representative answers the phone, they know exactly who is calling and in many cases what they are calling about. This saves time for both the caller and the support representative and provides a higher level of service than was previously possible without using the VoiceShot's version 4.x API.

The benefits did not stop there. After our initial deployment of the solution, we realized more subtle and advanced benefits. For example, this model instantly created a complete call and incident history for all our our customer service calls. We also found that we could conditionally transfer a specific customer or incident to a specific representative if we choose to flag the the caller or incident that way. This allows a single customer service representative to follow a particular customer's issue from start to finish. Customers appreciate the personal touch and management appreciates the decrease in the number and duration of support calls.

Case Study Subject:

VoiceShot

Customer Service Department

Subject Profile:

Problem:

As we grow, we are looking for ways to provide our customers outstanding service while at the same time reducing costs.

Solution:

We used the VoiceShot v4.0 API to collect customer information and route all of our support calls. When a customer service representative answers the calls, he/she already has all of the customers information on their screen, as well as a complete support history and incident tracking. Subsequent calls regarding the same incident can even be routed automatically back to the same support representative. The end result is customer get better service and we spend less time on the phone.

Advantages:

Better customer service
Sophisticated support
queue
Reduced support costs
Complete call logging

Details
The solution was extremely straight forward. Here is a summary of the steps we took:

1. Created a VoiceShot developer campaign at the VoiceShot Web site
A VoiceShot "campaign" is a collection of sounds files organized into a menu structure with features such as a main greeting, sub-branches, extensions, transfers, voice mail and more. At the VoiceShot Web site, campaigns are created with an easy to use Web-based graphical interface. A developer campaign is a specific type of VoiceShot campaign that provides a real-time data exchange between the caller and a 3rd party Web site or application. In this case, the 3rd party Web site was our customer support intranet.


	We use the VoiceShot v4.0 API to collect customer information and route all of our support calls....The end result is customers get better service and we spend less time on the phone.

2. Created an ASP page based on one of the examples to control the developer campaign
Included in the v4.x API download are several ASP and PHP examples. The purpose of the page we created was to receive the XML caller information sent from VoiceShot and send responses back (also in XML). Data sent in XML from VoiceShot includes call connect information such as date and time and caller id. During the call, key press information is sent in real-time formatted in XML as well other information such as exactly where the caller is in the menu structure.

3. Forwarded our (818) support line to our new VoiceShot developer campaign
The final step was to route our support calls to our new developer campaign. We later published the 8xx number on the VoiceShot Web site as well so callers could call it directly, providing an even higher level of service to our customers.

The ASP script we created in Step 2 above uses two database tables we created for this project:

Table 1: Caller Ids Associates one or more caller ids with a customer
Field 1:	Record Id (Auto-incrementing)
Field 2:	Customer Id
Field 3:	Caller Id

Table 2: Support Calls History of customer service calls
Field 1:	Record Id (Auto-incrementing)
Field 2:	Time Of Call
Field 3:	Customer Id
Field 4:	User name
Field 5:	Phone
Field 6:	Account Balance
Field 7:	Subject

Whenever a customer service call comes in, our ASP script is fed information formatted in XML about the call in real-time, starting right from connect. When a call comes in , we check to see if the caller id sent in the XML is from a customer who's caller id we have on file (Table 1). If it is, we instantly know who's calling prior to any human involvement. At that point our ASP script logs the call to our Support Calls table (Table 2) and sends an XML command back to VoiceShot telling it to transfer the call to a support representative. When the support representative's extension rings, the representative already has the caller's information on a screen we added to our customer service intranet.

If our ASP script does not recognize the caller id, an XML command is sent to VoiceShot to prompt the user to enter their customer number. The caller's key presses are sent in real-time back to our ASP script, at which point it looks up the customer number, adds the caller id to the Caller Ids table and sends VoiceShot an XML command to transfer the call to a representative. In this manner, our customer service application "learns" as time goes by. From any unique phone, a customer only has to enter their customer number once. Future calls from that same phone are automatically recognized as being from that customer.

Also, notice the Subject field in the Support Calls table. This field allows a customer service representative to log the subject of the call as well as any relevant notes, creating a detailed and informative call log. Other support representatives can view these notes if a particular callers calls again, sales managers can see affect of promotions or Web site additions on the volume and nature of customer service calls and our IT department can see exactly how any issues or outages propagate into user issues.

Another benefit of using VoiceShot to handle all of our customer service calls is the sophisticated call queuing or Automated Call Distribution (ACD) VoiceShot offers. Customer service calls can be routed to support representative in a sequential or round robin fashion and also to specific extensions. If all support representatives are helping other customers, callers can choose to wait in queue or leave voice mail. Different queuing options can be used at different times of the day, weekends, after hours or on holidays.

The VoiceShot v4.x API quickly provided our customer service department with a reliable, robust Customer Relationship Management application (CRM) that we could not imagine being without.

For more information on the VoiceShot 4.x API, please visit:
http://www.voiceshot.com/public/developer.asp

or contact VoiceShot at (800) 962-0126 / (734) 513-0872