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Examples of Custom Systems |
Some Uses of The FAR Voice
A few of the more interesting applications that we and some of
our licensees have implemented.
The largest festival association in the world has an
Info-System that provides information to callers about
everything from dates and groups scheduled to specials,
ticket information and handicapped facilities. Much of the
information changes frequently, and the system can be loaded
with future information that automatically appears (and later
disappears) on a specific day. Callers with a fax machine may
order certain information faxed to them. The system also
sends thousands of fax announcements to radio stations and
other media to publicize coming shows. The same system
provides auto-attendant and voice mail services for the full
time staff of over 100 people.
The automated system receives hourly check-in calls from
industrial guards on duty overnight. If one of them fails to
call within the appointed time slot, the system calls a
supervisor with the alert. A report of the previous night's
check-in activity is sent automatically by fax to
headquarters each morning.
A gas and electric utility company uses a system to call
hundreds of industrial customers to inform them of electric
or gas curtailments. The system also allows customers to call
in and receive current status information, including a faxed
verification. The system is very complex and actually
consists of two completely redundant systems that monitor
each other. Each of the systems can take over the entire job
if one of them fails, including during the process of a
series of curtailment notification calls. Information about
curtailments ordered is automatically uploaded to the
company's billing computer. A text version of curtailment
information is automatically uploaded to the company's
bulletin board (BBS).
A company uses the system to automatically receive after
hours calls requesting information and brochures, and to
receive orders. The system asks the caller a series of
questions and records the answers. Transcribers from the
company call the system the next day and are given the
recordings, in order, with useful transcription features,
such as skip backward and forward.
Health care providers enter patient and procedure codes
and receive verification of coverage. The data base on the
system is updated nightly by a link with the company's
mainframe in another part of the country. Several regional
systems, all tied to the central mainframe have been
implemented.
The system allows account managers and sales
representatives to activate, deactivate, and change codes on
pagers, all by touch-tone. Previously, the only way these
operations could be done from the field was via modem and
terminal, or by leaving a verbal 'request order' for a clerk
to do it - usually much later. The system results in
considerable savings and much improved response time to
customer change requests.
An automobile dealer provides a 'used car listing'
service. Callers are prompted to enter their choices of
brand, price range, style, model, etc. and are given a list
of the cars that fit those criteria. The caller can hear a
detailed description of each vehicle.
After hours and on holidays the system offers choices of
information and the ability for callers to leave messages in
any of several 'mailboxes' for different departments. A
service 'hotline' gives callers the ability to declare an
emergency, causing the system to immediately start placing
calls to registered technicians to deliver the emergency
message.
Teachers record information about class activity and
homework assignments. Parents call the system, enter a class
ID code, and hear the teacher's recording. Truancy is
dramatically reduced because the system calls parents at home
in the evening if a child was absent that day. Parents can
access often requested information about the school, such as
lunch menus and event schedules. Because the system is
coupled to the school's scheduling computer, there is minimal
staff time required to keep the system current with changing
student and class assignments.
A trade organization surveys their members each month
regarding various issues. Members call the system and respond
to the survey questions using touch-tone entries. The system
automatically and continuously tabulates survey results, and
upon request, either prints them or sends them by fax to an
office that is not at the same location as the system. The
system also provides information to members regarding
activities throughout the region, actions being taken,
positions on political issues, and bills before legislative
bodies.
A large hospital provides a 'Job-Line' that allows callers
to use touch tone inputs to select the classification of job
and the location. From a data base, the caller then hears a
list of short job descriptions. The caller can elect to hear
a complete description of any job, and then move backward or
forward through the list. The hospital reports that their job
application rate is up, telephone traffic in the personnel
department is down, and they save several times the system
cost each year in advertising costs.
A large company collects payroll time information by
having employees call the system and use their touch-tone
keypad to enter hours worked, cost center to charge to,
vacation time, and other exception hours. All entries are
confirmed to the caller before registering them. Before each
payroll run, reports of all entries are compiled and faxed to
supervisors for review who may then register approvals by
touch-tone phone. The final outputs are formatted for use by
the payroll mainframe and uploaded to it over a network
connection.
A service bureau provides 'mailboxes' in which realtors
record descriptions of properties they are representing.
Callers may access property descriptions on the basis of
price and size and may order faxes sent to them of selected
properties. The system captures calling telephone numbers and
automatically provides them as leads to the realtor. A single
system serves six different cities across the nation, each
with its own -800 telephone number. Callers from each city
receive a custom greeting and have access to separate
listings of properties.
A large franchise operation has PC based inventory systems
in most of its locations. A typical help-desk service is
available to franchise owners if they have a problem with
their system. Calls are received by the voice system and the
caller responds to menus that characterize the type of
problem they are having. The caller is also prompted to leave
a voice message describing the problem. The voice system
automatically logs the call to the help desk mainframe
computer, obtains a trouble ticket number from the mainframe,
and reads the call backlog information. The voice system
speaks the trouble ticket number and the number of calls
ahead of this user.
A large hospital has so many departments and services that
a conventional auto-attendant provides only minimal relief to
the operators. The majority of callers are seeking a
department rather than a specific extension. An elaborate
custom front end of menus and directories provides the
necessary routing, off-loading most of the routine call
volume that human operators had previously handled . The
custom front end is completely integrated into the voice mail
system, so callers who know a specific extension can still
use that method for efficient call routing.
A company has a Cobol program running on a mainframe
generating thousands of reports that must be sent weekly to
clients. To reduce the cost and delay time associated with
the mail, they wish to fax these documents. The fax
sub-system of The FAR Voice provides a network based fax
server to allow these documents to be automatically faxed at
an appointed time.
A trucking company has drivers calling the dispatch center
at intervals along their route to report their status.
Routine calls are now handled automatically by the voice
system, thus freeing dispatchers to deal with on-the-road
emergencies. Drivers enter their personal ID code and the
telephone number from which they are calling. If drivers
indicates any status other than 'rolling and on-time' the
system transfers them to a dispatcher. For routine calls, the
system uses the telephone number entered to look up the
driver's geographic location in a data base of all telephone
numbers in North America and enters the driver ID, the
location, and the time/date into the company's mainframe
based dispatch program.
Using WAN (Wide Area Network) technology, a very large
company has created the ability to monitor all of their
computer systems from a central location. A voice system has
been created to interface with the monitoring software using
terminal emulation. During holidays and night hours, the
voice system watches for system problems at all locations. If
a problem does occur, the voice system looks up the list of
technicians on-call for a particular system and type of
problem, and then automatically places notification calls
until it gets a response.
A federally funded program to provide information about
drug abuse is implemented as a large, very complex,
information tree. Using DID (Direct Inward Dialing) trunks,
the same system provides different menus of information to
teens, parents, and professionals (guidance counselors,
teachers, etc.).
