Perfect Router comes with, and runs on, TuVox Conversational Voice Response (CVR) 4.0, a set of management tools and components used to customize Perfect Router in the enterprise.
“You never get to 100 percent of calls handled automatically,” said Steve Pollock, co-founder of TuVox, “but it can be a lot better than what it has been with touch-tone.”
Pollock explained there are two main issues involved in setting up a conversational voice-response system. First, the system must connect efficiently to the enterprise’s existing response systems. Some large companies have as many as 1,000 customer service telephone numbers with multiple types of interactive voice response (IVR) among them. Others have one telephone number and may have trouble getting the caller efficiently to the right connection. Software logic can be used to redirect calls based on time of day, class of caller, and so on--if the enterprise’s systems have these capabilities. At minimum, this call routing must be configured during TuVox CVR deployment; Perfect Router draws this knowledge dynamically from a database, so the routing logic can be updated without rebuilding the application.
The second main issue is determining what the need is, even if the caller’s first statement is ambiguous (e.g. “I have a problem with my product”). During deployment, TuVox CVR collects all of the enterprise’s existing data about customer conversations and then generates a first-draft conversation tree that developers can refine, which reduces deployment time. According to Pollock, “People who used to work on requirements documents can now get involved in creating the system instead.”
Pricing for a working, customized application starts around $150,000, varying with the number of routable destinations, overall size, and number simultaneous connections. TuVox plans additional horizontal applications, as well as vertical ones for particular markets in the future.
