1 Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering Hugo Monteiro Nº46546 . Marco Mouta Nº46607 Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree . Nº119 IVR design for telecommunications operators Developed in L 2 F, INESC ID Lisboa Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.
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Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering Hugo Monteiro Nº46546. Marco Mouta Nº46607 1 Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree.
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1Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering
Hugo Monteiro Nº46546 . Marco Mouta Nº46607
Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree . Nº119
IVR design for telecommunications operatorsDeveloped in L2F, INESC ID LisboaInstituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa.
• IVRs, what and what for?Autonomous and modular platforms capable of establishing an interactive Human-Machine interface. This sort of platforms are designated as IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and are typically used in customer service phone lines such as those of telephone operators, insurances, banks, and airports.
– IVRs enable an automatic interaction with the customer and as such have two advantages:
• They provide permanent service (24h).
• They lower significantly the number of calls placed on hold during peak periods.
• IVR platforms are normally equipped with voice synthesizers and devices that recognize Dual Tone Multiple Frequency (DTMF) inputs, but in some cases they are also equipped with speech recognition devices.
• Speech recognition devices provide the customer with an experience as close to “natural” as possible.
• This project was developed as a component of the Final Project towards the Bachelors Degree in Computer and Electro-techniques Engineering. It aimed to create an autonomous and modular platform capable of establishing an interactive Human-Machine interface inEuropean Portuguese.
• Standard: using open standard modules like publicVoiceXML.
• Autonomous: allowing two different work environments. – “Laboratory environment”: using local PC interface.– “Real environment”: using ISDN line.
• Modular: any module could be replaced, it’s only necessary to accomplish standard specifications, e.g. Microsoft SAPI.
• Until very recently, the IVRs were proprietary solutions:
– Once an IVR was installed and operational, both the hardware and the software became the property of a single provider.
– This type of solutions, proprietary and “key in hand” prove themselves limited in that a common programmer is not capable of developing new applications.
• To overcome these and other limitations and with the primary goal of standardizing IVR platforms and applications, VoiceXML was developed.
• Nowadays, VoiceXML is considered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the standard, describing interactive dialogues using as XML (Extensive Markup Language) a base.
• VoiceXML promotes IVR platforms and applications standardization.
• PVX is an open source project and as such it incorporates the contributions from different programmers spread throughout the world.
• In its original version, which was the starting point for this project, PVX was incomplete: it did not contemplate speech recognition, allowing only for speech synthesizing and recognition of DTMF inputs.
• Aiming to implement a Human-Machine interface in European Portuguese, we proceeded to incorporate two speech engines onto the PVX: the Audimus for speech recognition and the DIXI for speech synthesis.
• Both the Audimus and the DIXI were developed by the Laboratório de Sistemas de Lingua Falada (L2F), INESC ID, in Lisbon.
Such as Visual browser, i.e. Internet Explorer, a VoiceXML browser may access to Web contents.
Nevertheless there are some differences to consider:
– Contents verbalization to present to user.
– Allow speech answers instead of typical keyboard and mouse interaction.
– Specific Voice Web servers; They handle HTTP VoiceXML browser requests, answering with dynamic VoiceXML documents to present Web contents to the user.
Finally, once we had defined and implemented the complete system architecture, we developed a VoiceXML application based on menus with three separate services: Voice E-mail, Weather reports and availability to news reports based on RSS (Rich Site Summary) documents
• Voice services Web server– Handles all the publicVoiceXML requests to access Web contents,
allowing the user to access Web services using the telephone.
– Specific Servlets are responsible to process the referred request and generate dynamic VoiceXML documents Aplicação de Voz VoiceXML
• VoiceXML application based on menus with three separate services: – Voice E-mail, – Weather reports – News reports based on RSS (Rich Site Summary) Web sites.
Dedicated user interaction based on a XML Client’s file.