By Dan Blacharski
January 16, 2001
The so-called telephonic Web interface--Web pages served
over the phone--gives the Internet a voice. This relatively
new technology allows you to navigate a Web site simply by
speaking to it over any telephone; the site then reads content
back to you. ASPs such as VocalPoint and many major carriers
and ISPs are now voice-enabling Web sites to give their customers
easy access from any telephone.
Navigate by
Voice
Web surfers are notoriously impatient. If they can't find
what they want on a Web page within a few seconds, they'll
head elsewhere. Hence, content providers must help visitors
find what they need quickly, and a telephonic interface does
just that. All users have to do is dial their ISP from any
cellular or landline phone, invoke the ISP's voice browser,
open the voice-enabled Web site, and start talking.
Small businesses could use this technology, for example,
to give customers product information a voice-based email/messaging
service or frequent financial news updates or stock prices.
The VocalPoint solution voice-enables the entire Web site,
so you can deliver as much or as little content as your customer
wants. And because the voice browser understands the hierarchical
nature of Web pages, it's easy to get to specific information
quickly.
Voice pages also let the visually impaired take full advantage
of the Web and are a great way to replace live operators and
expensive IVR (interactive voice response) systems. For example,
a visitor to a sports portal could ask for the latest Big
Ten scores, or a member of a financial information site could
ask for the most recent headlines that relate to a particular
stock--no operator required.
Road warriors--salespeople and business travelers--can use
the voice-enabled Web to access company intranet information
while on the road. Want your sales staff to have real-time
access to product and price info? Voice-enable your intranet,
and your employees can call in on their cell phones in the
middle of a sales pitch to get instant information. Have customers
that need up-to-the-minute account data several times a day?
You can do it without having to deploy an expensive IVR system
or hire live staff.
Complications
In the past, surfing voice-enabled Web sites was like talking
to the proverbial brick wall. Most telephonic sites offered
only a small amount of information and often required the
content provider to rewrite the Web site in VXML (Voice XML),
a time-consuming and sometimes confusing process. And because
VXML-based browsers can read only VXML sites, end users could
only voice-interact with those few Web sites that had been
repurposed. Since 99 percent of the Web is still written in
HTML, VXML hasn't been a practical solution.
Enter VocalPoint, which works like an ASP to interpret HTML
and XML content in real time. A simple overlay of extended
Cascading Style Sheets (xCSS) understands the Web page's hierarchy
and makes it navigable and voice accessible.
Here's an example. An ASP called @bovehealth delivers Web-enabled
solutions to health plans nationwide, allowing its customers
to deliver critical health plan information to members over
the telephone. @bovehealth uses VocalPoint's VoiceASP solution
to voice-enable its content so that health plan members can
call a health plan's Web site on the phone, voice-browse through
rich content for whatever information they need, then have
that information read back to them. This means easy access
to information for the health plan member and cost savings
for the plan operator.
"The addition of VocalPoint to our services allows more
of our end users to access critical health plan information,"
says John Baerthlein, vice president for sales and marketing
at @bovehealth. "From a development perspective, the
VocalPoint technology was a winner hands down. Our content
does not have to be rewritten, and we don't have to learn
any new markup languages. We can bring a huge amount of information
to any user over any phone, simply by applying a Cascading
Style Sheet template to our existing Web content.
"Voice browsing is a great low-cost substitute for IVR
systems, which often have clunky interfaces and are expensive,
inflexible, and difficult to deploy. This technology breaks
the price barrier, delivering Web access to anyone who wants
it and offering plenty of customer contact options to businesses
of any size.
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