Thank you to all our customers and those who have supported Plum over the years. In 2011, we look forward to our 11th year in business and the many product enhancements we have planned for the New Year.
All the best,
The Plum Team
Tracking leads that contact a sales department by filling out a web form or sending an email is easy. Google and a host of others provide free web site analytic tools that report information about web site visitors, how they found your site and whether or not they converted (i.e. filled out a web form to contact your company.) Most businesses that generate leads through online advertising or SEO (search engine optimization) use this information to calculate the cost per click, cost per conversion/lead, and ultimately the cost per customer acquisition. Important information, right?
The problem with tools like Google Analytics is they don’t provide statistics about site visitors that contact your company via the phone. Often a company’s best leads call so without this data, marketers don’t know the true cost of an online campaign, where their best leads come from, and the overall effectiveness of their efforts. To address this issue, Plum developed an IVR application that tracks data from leads that call. Each time a visitor comes to our site a unique 800 number is displayed. These unique numbers correlate with a site visitor’s search information collected from Google (and the other search engines). When someone calls our sales department, information about the caller’s search path is posted to Salesforce. Before the call is connected, our team also receives an instant message with the caller’s search term, adword, campaign and/or referring URL so they can immediately address questions related to a visitor’s interest in a specific Plum product. This data helps provide a complete picture of which ads perform best, which sites send us the most traffic, and the true cost of our online marketing campaigns.
We will post the algorithm and pseudocode for this application shortly so anyone with access to a VoiceXML platform can implement this application.
A number of developers have posted questions about the use of ECMAScript in their VoiceXML scripts. Below is a definition of ECMAScript and an example from Plum’s VoiceXML tutorial.
From Wikipedia:
ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.
From Plum’s VoiceXML tutorial:
Plum’s VoiceXML IVR Platform has a fully functioning JavaScript engine, similar to a standard web browser. This allows us to define functions and make use of all of the features that the JavaScript language has to offer.
Now, suppose we have a field that checks the length of a customer identification number.
<field name=”id” type=”digits”>
<prompt>
Please enter your customer identification number.
</prompt>
<filled>
<if cond=”id.length == 7″>
<assign name=”customerid” expr=”id”/>
You entered <value expr=”id”/>.
<!– transfer to premium support –>
<else/>
Invalid ID number. Please check the number
and try again.
<clear namelist=”id”/>
<reprompt/>
</if>
</filled>
</field>
In this example, “id” is an ECMAScript variable that is set when the caller enters a customer identification number. In the if conditional of the filled block, the contents of the “cond” attribute, “id.length == 7″, are evaluated as an ECMAScript expression. If the user entered a 7-digit number, the if conditional would be true and a new variable, “customerid”, would be assigned the value of “id”. Finally, the <value expr/> expression converts the contents of “id” into a string for playback and the application states what the user entered for their “id”. If the user did not enter 7 digits, the if conditional would be false and go to the else conditional. The application would say to the user, “Invalid ID number. Please check the number and try again.” The “id” variable would be cleared with the <clear> tag and the application would reprompt the user for their customer identification number.
The holidays are almost over, but many of us still have lingering relatives and friends in town. The current weather conditions across much of the country have prevented travelers from returning home and many of us are seeking some post-Christmas entertainment. What is open? Are there special events occurring? What about sales? The post-Christmas haze is in full swing, and many of us are feeling a bit scattered. What could be the solution for this? An interactive voice response system of course! An IVR could be set up to work as a “city search” of sorts, gathering and storing data from all sorts of venues including restaurants, shopping centers, performing arts complexes, and movie theaters. Users could call in, specify the type of information they were seeking, enter the location they were interested in hearing about, and receive all pertinent information in a quick and painless manner. Instead of sitting around the house staring at Uncle Edward, “bouncing ideas off each other”, you could be at a fantastic sale getting those work pants you so desperately have need, at the movies seeing the next great flick, or even at a skating rink enjoying the winter weather. An IVR would go far to provide entertainment for all and relieve some of the hosting stress many of us are inevitably feeling at the moment!
Everyone is traversing the country, and even the world at this time of year. As we all head home for the holidays, it can be a time of great joy and great stress. The Plum Team is also making their way home to visit with family and friends, but customers in need of technical support can still reach a member of our support staff over the holiday weekend, part of our 24-hour a day, 365 day a year support guarantee. Your IVR systems and configurations are always in good hands! From all of us at Plum Voice, we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season, and a very merry Christmas!
The time nears for Santa to begin his yearly round-the-world trek. In just four short nights, Santa will pack his sleigh, amass his elves, hitch his reindeer, and kick off what is sure to be a night of intense world travel. As children sleep below him with visions of sugarplums and snow dancing in their heads, Santa has to do a lot of work. Millions of children, naughty and nice alike have submitted their Christmas wishes. Santa and his elves have spent the year deliberating whether children are deserving of presents, and have all requests prepared and ready. For Santa, this is the day he and Mrs. Claus have been waiting for. While it only happens once a year, the hopes and dreams of millions of children (and sometimes adults) rely on him getting presents down the chimney and under the tree in time for Christmas morning. From Sidney to Stockholm to San Francisco, Santa has to contend with many different types of weather. It is summer in the Southern hemisphere so the weather is nice and balmy, while here in the Northern hemisphere, we just celebrated the first day of winter, and much of the globe is blanketed in snow and freezing temperatures. How can Santa be prepared for all these disparate weather conditions? With the help of a weather monitoring interactive voice response system of course! Santa (or more likely the elves) could call into this IVR based on where they were set to descend, and gauge from there whether they needed to deploy the sleigh’s defrosters or air conditioning. The IVR system would allow the elves to check on weather reports anywhere in the world, so that they could be prepared for inclement weather conditions wherever they were next landing. Santa and the elves would never be surprised by a rain or snowstorm, and could instead focus on delivering all of those presents to the millions below awaiting them on Christmas morning!
For many of us, holiday cookie exchanges are a staple of the season at our workplace. Everyone brings in his or her favorite cookie, be it gingerbread or shortbread, and everyone swaps. In this way, coworkers get to share their favorite cookies with each other, and people are introduced to and get to sample different varieties of cookies that they hadn’t tasted before. This can be a very fun office tradition, and can alleviate much of the stress of holiday baking for many. However, those of us who are not master chefs may have some trouble finding the perfect cookie recipe and baking cookies to perfection. An Interactive Voice Response system could offer users a quick and easy solution. Users could call in and specify the kind of cookies they wanted to make or the ingredients they wanted to work with. The interactive voice response system would interface with online databases, allowing users to specify their preferences, and then returning results based on said specifications. The phone could read all directions, so users could use the system either via blue tooth or speaker, allowing them to keep their hands free while baking. The system would be equipped with automatic speech recognition, so if users were having a hard time keeping pace with the IVR system reading the recipe, they could simply stop or pause the directions until they had caught up. The system could interface with local grocers and allow users to access information about where ingredients could be purchased, and additionally inform them of deals on food items. This would be a an all-encompassing system that would greatly aid users in concocting their holiday treats, and everyone would be well on their way to having an oven full of nicely-browning cookies!
Plum provides gateway services for customer-developed VoiceXML applications, and also provides end-to-end hosting of complete enterprise IVR solutions. All Plum hosted solutions include telephony gateway integration and hosting of the VoiceXML Interpreter. We provide DID local access numbers in countries around the globe. Depending on the application requirements, the VoiceXML Interpreter can provide DTMF-only support, or integrate best-in-class voice technologies for automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. The Plum Voice Portal modular architecture also allows for integration with voice technology components as external services provided by outboard servers. If required by the application, Plum can farm out CPU-hungry processes such as TTS to a farm of dedicated servers. This enables us to integrate a wide variety of voice technologies, including both open source and licensed commercial technologies running on any platform. It also allows us to architect our systems to maximize performance and efficiencies of scale.
Customers are free to use any web technologies and middleware to serve their own VoiceXML applications through the Plum gateway. The Plum Voice Interpreter connects to all application servers remotely through HTTP. Intelligent caching of VoiceXML and audio files by the Interpreter minimizes the impact of network latency. IP blocking and VPN technology such as IP tunneling can be used to secure sensitive applications and data. Plum often develops and hosts complete VoiceXML application suites for enterprise clients. Depending upon the integration requirements for the application, the VoiceXML app server can either connect in real time to back-end servers via a secure IP link or connect to a Plum-hosted relational database that is periodically updated with your enterprise data through a batch process.
It’s hard to believe another year is coming to a close! Thanks to our loyal clients, we’ve had another record-breaking year of growth and look forward to providing more innovative IVR tools and services in the coming year. In this newsletter we look back at the product launches and improvements to service that helped us achieve success in 2010.
2010 Product and Service Highlights
In November, Plum Expanded its Global Presence to Include an Additional 50 Countries.
Businesses and developers can now rapidly deploy automated voice applications around the world using one centralized platform that supports local numbers in more than 65 countries. The Plum Voice Hosted IVR platform and its associated tools enables customers to quickly build and deliver sophisticated telephony applications featuring advanced speech recognition and speech synthesis without the hassles of telecom infrastructure management.
In June, Plum Voice Launched QuickFuse, an Intuitive Cloud Telephony Service that Eliminates the Need to Code Voice Applications.
Developers and businesses of all sizes have long been challenged to find a sophisticated and intuitive tool for automating phone calls. Tools that offer simplistic APIs are rarely practical for creating real-world call handling applications that ensure optimal customer satisfaction. QuickFuse, a one-of-a-kind web-based IVR application editor and delivery platform, puts APIs in the background and brings visual call flows to the foreground, allowing anyone to participate in the creation of dialogs that communicate with consumers. This approach to IVR development proved to be so compelling that one month after the QuickFuse Launch, 10,000 voice applications had already been developed on the QuickFuse platform.
Also in June, Plum Unveiled a New Pollster Version of the Plum Survey Platform to Allow Pollsters to Design, Deliver and Analyze Web and IVR Surveys Instantly.
In today’s political and technological landscape, gathering critical information and feedback from voters and other constituents quickly and accurately is vital to moving campaigns forward. Plum Voice, the leading single-source provider of automated telephony solutions, now offers a pollster version of Plum Survey Version 1.6, the first tool that allows users in the political and research-oriented polling industry to create one survey and deploy it over both the Internet, phone and through mobile devices. Plum Survey provides creators with real-time analytic tools and graphics to help navigate responses to identify trends, patterns and behaviors.
For more information about the products listed above, or to discuss upcoming features and services, please contact the Plum team at info@plumvoice.com or directly at 800-995-7586.
Many of us are spread out in disparate parts of the country and even the world. The holidays are a time for us to reunite with family and friends, returning to our hometowns and catching up with people we haven’t seen throughout the year. It is a time many of us look forward to, and when are tucked into our childhood beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads we are all happy. However, there is a lot of commuting and travel that must be done in order to wake up with our families on Christmas morning. Christmas travel can be an intense undertaking, filled with frustration and hassle. Wintertime puts extra stress and strain on the airlines, and there are flight delays, long lines, and bitter cold to contend with. An interactive voice response system could go far to ease the pressure and anxiety, by allowing travelers to purchase their tickets, monitor their flight, and enhance their travel arrangements, all on the go telephonically. Users could call in, search for the lowest-priced, most convenient tickets, and purchase them right there. They could also choose their seating arrangements, pre-check in, specify meal preferences, and purchase in-flight entertainment. The IVR system could also be programmed to make outbound calls in the event that flights were delayed, cancelled, or otherwise altered. Family member and friends could also utilize this IVR system to call in and make sure their loved one’s flight was on time. This would be a great system, and would go far in making holiday travel less stressful and ensuring that everyone returned home safe and sound, for a warm and happy family Christmas!
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