GVP Self-Service

 
Genesys Voice Platform (GVP) is a software-only product that brings Internet technologies to the world of voice.

GVP removes constraints of legacy IVR systems by offering standards-based development, flexible deployment options, simplified integration and improved time to rollout for speech-directed voice applications.

Genesys Voice Platform collects basic call information such as originating and dialled number, and customer interaction information, which is passed to Genesys Enterprise Routing for intelligent customer segmentation and call routing instructions. Using the call information, companies can manage customer interactions in a more personalized, consistent and efficient manner, maximizing the productivity of contact centre resources. This tightly integrated solution provides companies with the ability to segment and prioritize customer interactions according to business value, desired service level or specific needs.

One of Genesys Voice Platform’s many functionalities is prompting the customer and accepting responses using voice (as well as digits). Thus, the customer can conduct business solely by voice, thereby freeing an agent for other customer interactions. For example, a customer calling a bank could transfer funds from checking to savings or a customer calling an airline could check the status of a flight by interacting with the systems directly.

VoiceXML is a language for creating voice-user interfaces, particularly for the telephone. It uses speech recognition and touchtone (DTMF keypad) for input, and pre-recorded audio and text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) for output. It is based on the Worldwide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Extensible Markup Language (XML), and leverages the web paradigm for application development and deployment. By having a common language, application developers, platform vendors, and tool providers all can benefit from code portability and reuse.

With VoiceXML, speech recognition application development is greatly simplified by using familiar web infrastructure, including tools and Web servers. Instead of using a PC with a Web browser, any telephone can access VoiceXML applications via a VoiceXML “interpreter” (also known as a “browser”) running on a telephony server. Whereas HTML is commonly used for creating graphical Web applications, VoiceXML can be used for voice-enabled Web applications.

A VoiceXML application consists of several components, as shown below:

• Application Server - Typically a Web server, which runs the application logic, and may contain a database or interfaces to an external database or transaction server.

• VoiceXML Telephony Server - A platform that runs a VoiceXML interpreter that acts as a client to the application server. The interpreter understands VoiceXML dialogs and controls speech and telephony resources. These resource include ASR, TTS, audio play and record functions, as well as a telephony interface (TDM or VoIP).

• Internet Style Network - A TCP/IP-based packet network that connects the application server and telephony server via HTTP.

• Telephone Network - Typically the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), but could be a private telephone network (i.e. PBX), or VoIP packet network.

• Caller - Any telephone that can connect to the telephone network.

Communication between the web server and GVP is analogous to the desktop web browser model. In the case of the Internet, the Web Server produces HTML, which is understood by a browser Internet Explorer for example and rendered on the screen by the video card. In the case of GVP, the Web Server produces VoiceXML which is understood by the VoiceXML browser located on the VCS/IPCS, and rendered into voice interactions, which includes:

• Call handling - answering, bridging, disconnecting calls
• Media management - playing of prompts, using pre-recorded .vox or .wav files or text to speech
• Caller input - either DTMF (dual tone multi-frequency) or speech recognition.
Voice applications are generally developed as Active Server Pages (ASP) or Java Server Pages (JSP).

In either case the Web Server can query a database and retrieve information which is then used in the corresponding output.