“Calling All Cars” Speech Applications during Extraordinary Circumstances

1. SpeechTek 2007 “Calling All Cars”Speech Applications during Extraordinary Circumstances Tom Hanson Sr. Product Manager, Avaya

2. Extraordinary Circumstances • Times Are Not What They Used To Be (or are they?) • Events drive communication and Business Need to Respond • Weather Events • Labor Events • Quality Events • Disaster Events

3. Responses to Extraordinary Circumstances • Information and the Availability of Actions on Information Demand New Responses…. • Businesses Have to Respond to Meet these Events or Suffer the Consequences • Communications • Act on Data • Scale to Meet Demands • Keep Business Moving • Contingency Planning

4. Case 1: Weather • Date: January 2007 • Place: US Midwest • Conditions: Icy and Deteriorating • The Story: Multi-day Ice Storm Caused Hundreds of Flight Cancellations. A large Airline with many operations in the Midwest was affected. A new Speech Self-Service Application was targeted to go live Feb. to relieve flight status updates. • The Story behind the Story • Application was pushed live 2 weeks early on Avaya Voice Portal • Customers Opted In Resulted in 50% drop in Wait Time • Customer maintained its reputation in a time of Extraordinary Circumstances.

5. Lessons Learned • Self-Service can be Customer Choice • Clearly Allow Custom to opt in • Ensure Systems and Software are ready to be scaled up • Modularize and perform UAT on applications so that subsystems can be brought in as needed

6. Case 2: Labor Actions • Date: June 2007 • Place: Italy • Conditions: Italian National Railway: height Vacation Season has labor action • The Story: National Railway shutdown. Labor Action suspends operations including Ticketing. • The Story behind the Story • Telecom Italia using Avaya Voice Portal deploys Speech Application Developed and Deployed for Ticketing and Train Status Information.. • System was able to handle large amount of inquiries related to train status while taking new reservations. • Train system came back up at end of labor action with fully booked trains. (Didn’t have to fill the queue with new reservations)

7. Lessons Learned • Business Continuity includes customer service and not just keeping the operations going • Extraordinary Circumstances can sometimes be predicted, prepare customers for those circumstances • Hosted Environment was enabler to allow customer to focus on “what” and not “how”

8. Web Browser H T T P / H T M L CICS Business Objects Authentication JSP / VXML VXML Browser H T T P / V X M L Pages Typical Deployment Architecture • Web-based Architecture • Emergence of speech as a preferred user interface • Ubiquity of the web has created self service tools, standards and infrastructure • New three tiered distributed architectures in support of above • Web Services and Voice XML allow speech applications to leverage web investments • Enable reuse of: • Infrastructure • Applications • Integrations • Programmers • Results in lower TCO, more rapid development and deployment JSP Pages MQ Series Socket LDAP

9. Case 3: Businesses Responding to Events Product Recalls Have Multiple Impacts • Getting the Word Out • Press • Web • Notifications • Distributors • Having the Word Come Back In • Responding to Concerned Customers • Notification with Response • Escalation Paths

10. Example: Toy Recall • Testing of toys determine lead-based paint is found on multiple lots of shipped toys • Multiple Channels (email, automated escalation via phone and speech self-service) to bring together decision makers between • Company • Government • Contractor • Actionable Communication Plan to • Press (where to call/web to find specific information) • Financial Analysts (impact) • Retailers (recall process, removing stock) • Public (what to do) • Inbound • Handle millions of contacts • Process for Recall • Loyalty Marketing/Keep Trust

11. Lessons Learned • Communicating Effectively with Customers Requires Proactively Communicating to Customers, Distributors, Retail, and Government • Create a consistent multi-channel communication plan for incoming contacts • Anticipate the reason the customer is calling

12. Conference Find Event Notify/Approve Exception Alert Notify Consult Review Case 4: Planning for Extraordinary Circumstances • Example: Planning for Global Pandemic • Customer Service Needs • Operational Needs • Financial Needs It’s All About Communications Distributors/Partners Customers Financial Markets Employees

13. People Voice Self Service Web Self Service Architectural Planning • Geographically Distributed, But Can Stand-alone • IP-based, Software-based • Rapid Deployment, Rapid Modification • Services Oriented Architecture

14. PCI-3 PCI-3 PCI-2 PCI-2 PCI-1 PCI-1 PCI-3 PCI-3 PCI-2 PCI-2 PCI-1 PCI-1 Consolidated management across all sites Avaya Voice Portal Multi-Site ManagementSingle point of administration, management and reporting Disaster Recovery Licensing Consolidated Reporting across sites High Availability at Each Site Chicago Pune London

16. Conclusions Extraordinary Times Demand Extraordinary Responses • Speech Applications are part of any Business Flexibility and Business Continuity infrastructure • Speech Applications are key part of a Multi-channel Approach • Managing Communications means Managing Business • Resources for More Thought (White papers, Case Studies) • http://www.avaya.com/speech Speech Application Examples • http://www.avaya.com/cebp Communications Enabled Business Process

17. Thank You !