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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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.

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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)

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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”

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 8 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 10 Example: Toy Recall Testing of toys determine lead-based paint is found on multiple lots of shipped toys –Multiple Channels ( , 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 12 Case 4: Planning for Extraordinary Circumstances Example: Planning for Global Pandemic –Customer Service Needs –Operational Needs –Financial Needs It’s All About Communications Find Conference Notify/Approve NotifyConsultReview Exception Alert Event

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 13 Architectural Planning Geographically Distributed, But Can Stand-alone IP-based, Software-based Rapid Deployment, Rapid Modification Services Oriented Architecture Web Self Service Voice Self Service People

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 14 Avaya Voice Portal Multi-Site Management Single point of administration, management and reporting Chicago London Pune PCI-1 PCI-2 PCI-3 PCI-1 PCI-2 PCI-3 PCI-1 PCI-2 PCI-3 PCI-1 PCI-2 PCI-3 Consolidated Reporting across sites Consolidated management across all sites Disaster Recovery Licensing High Availability at Each Site

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 15

© 2007 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved. 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) – Speech Application Exampleshttp:// – Communications Enabled Business Processhttp://

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