Bankinter is the leading Internet bank and brokerage firm in Spain. Bankinter conducted extensive tests that showed widespread customer demand and enthusiastic support for a multimodal interface that would make the bank’s mobile applications, including stock trading and account management, more usable and user-friendly.

“Our customers wanted the flexibility to get financial information, and to transact business from their mobile phones, but do not like the current click-click and triple tapping interface,” said Jesus Marquina, Chief Information Officer at Bankinter. “We strongly believe that offering them the choice of voice-enabled search, and of entering information by speaking and seeing the results on the screen, will further increase the number of completed self-care transactions, and improve customer satisfaction.”

One of Bankinter’s requirements was that the platform on which the solution was built must be standards-compliant. The brokerage application has both a “visual” component built in Java, and a “voice” component built in VoiceXML. Kirusa’s Multi-Modal Solution for IP voice (KMS-IPV) was integrated with Loquendo’s VoxNauta VoiceXML platform to create a speech-enabled, standards-based multimodal offering. Using Loquendo and Kirusa technology, Bankinter’s application takes advantage of the full power of VoiceXML in building the multimodal interface

After the spate of recurring flooding in several French regions, some local authorities have implemented information systems to aid their inhabitants. Direction Régionale de l’environnment, centre bassin bretagne

In order to inform and to reduce the risks for the riverside residents in areas that have experienced floods, the French Regional Direction of Environment of the Region Centre (DIREN) has deployed a telephone-based information system.  Since December 2004, citizens near the Loire river can call the system 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, to get detailed information about current flooding risks, the level of the river and outflow and low-water-mark information.

This voice-driven service was developed in VoiceXML by Eloquant and uses text-to-speech technology to deliver dynamically changing information: when DIREN updates the information, the information system’s audio prompt data is updated automatically in real time, which saves time and avoids complexity for the DIREN operator. The service is hosted by Eloquant, a European VoiceXML specialist, on its multi-client infrastructure.

This information service may be enhanced in the future with “push” functionality using voice outcall and/or SMS alerts, again using VoiceXML technology, to warn the citizens proactively of urgent flood risk.

“Choosing a hosted VoiceXML solution enabled DIREN to reduce the time to deploy such a service while keeping costs low and providing the riverside residents of the Loire Valley an efficient and easy-to-use information service,” said Damien Leretaille, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Eloquant.

Virgin Atlantic is one of the top brands in the travel industry and is known as a leader and an innovator in all areas of its business. Virgin Atlantic wanted to replace its legacy touch-tone phone information system with a solution that could provide a more-flexible, more-intuitive caller experience and handle more than half a million customer calls each year.

Virgin Atlantic chose the VoiceXML-based Nuance Voice Platform™ from Nuance as the foundation of its new voice-driven flight information service. The VoiceXML platform allowed the system to be built on Virgin Atlantic’s choice of operating systems, telephony hardware and application servers. Because VoiceXML is based on open standards, Virgin Atlantic can easily migrate its voice-driven applications between hosted and customer-premise configurations, should it choose.

Virgin Atlantic’s successful VoiceXML-based deployment allowed the company to improve its customer experience, reduce costs and support its brand identity. In addition, the new flight information system is consistent with the company’s cutting-edge and customer-oriented reputation.

Like virtually every other hospital, the Miami Children’s Hospital relied on the “clipboard” patient tracking system that has been popular for over a century. The hospital recognized that capturing real-time patient data at the point of care is critical in saving lives, and sought to improve on the paper-and-clipboard approach. In addition, they wanted a secure system to ensure compliance with federal rules that govern the privacy of medical records.

Miami Children’s Hospital chose Teges Corporation’s i-Rounds (short for “Internet rounds”) software, which is powered by IBM WebSphere Multimodal Environment. IBM’s software integrates different modes of data entry: speech, keyboard strokes and handwriting-recognition technology. This “multimodal” approach provides physicians and nurses with the option of using spoken commands to access patient records and enter repetitive information.

The specification underlying IBM’s multimodal capabilities is called the XHTML+Voice (X+V for short) markup language, which is a combination of two other technologies, XHTML and VoiceXML. Based on Web standards, X+V sped the addition of speech to i-Rounds and used Web application development skills already possessed by Teges programmers. The use of X+V for multimodal applications demonstrates the powerful flexibility and extensibility of the VoiceXML markup language, an industry standard and W3C recommendation used by thousands of companies worldwide.

The speech features of i-Rounds have been enabled in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) and in the OR for use during pediatric cardiac surgery. They provide a hands-free mechanism for physicians to enter information, retrieve information and record their voice directly into the patient’s medical record, making the doctor’s assessment/diagnosis available immediately without waiting for transcription services. In the OR, the computer speaks to the surgeon through four speakers that are embedded in the ceiling. The surgeon interacts with the computer using a cardioid wireless microphone, which activates the speech system when the surgeon utters the keyword “computer.” In the CICU, clinicians access the system by using a wireless tablet PC. Watch video.

Many companies find that they have developed separate technology infrastructures to serve their Web customers and their phone callers. Typically, each channel has its own business logic, hardware, integration to back-end systems and support teams. In 2001, E*TRADE FINANCIAL decided to improve customer service by adding VoiceXML-based self-service to their telephone systems. The usual headaches and costs involved with infrastructure upgrades spurred them to seek innovative ways to integrate their customer support resources while remaining true to their open source roots.

E*TRADE chose to outsource these challenges to Tellme, with the goal of using their existing Internet data to consolidate the Web and phone channels. E*TRADE and Tellme collaborated to design a phone system that Tellme runs that uses VoiceXML, both to achieve real business results and to improve the customer experience. Because VoiceXML is standards-based, the solution was quick to deploy, without requiring specialized hardware, proprietary software or complex integration. The framework to enable the VoiceXML applications were already in place in E*TRADE’s Web environment.

Now, when an E*TRADE customer takes action in one channel the resulting changes are automatically reflected in every customer channel simultaneously across the unified infrastructure. Every E*TRADE customer has the same password for both the phone and Web, avoiding the hassle of managing multiple passwords. Additionally, the VoiceXML-based system saves E*TRADE approximately $30 million annually.

“By using VoiceXML to tie our phone system to our Web infrastructure, we’ve been able to innovate customer phone services as easily as we evolve our Web offerings, while simultaneously reducing our overall customer service costs,” said Hartley Caldwell, Vice President, E*TRADE FINANCIAL.

mobilkom austria, Austria’s leading mobile communications provider, commands a market share of approximately 42 percent of all Austrian mobile phone users. In addition, mobilkom austria also provides wireless services in Croatia, Slovenia, and Liechtenstein. With the support of VoiceGenie Technologies, mobilkom austria now uses a VoiceXML-platform to deliver next-generation interactive voice response (IVR) solutions to their subscribers.

One advanced IVR application launched by mobilkom austria includes a music ringback tone service. Ringback tones are customized audio clips, such as music from popular artists that callers hear instead of the usual ringing tone when they dial a number. Subscribers can order ringback tones through the WAP micro-browser on their cell phone, or they can call into an IVR contact center. By leveraging VoiceGenie’s VoiceXML 2.0-compliant platform, mobilkom austria was able to use the same Web server and business logic for both the WAP interface and the voice interface. This led to lower deployment costs and a rapid development time, as VoiceXML leverages existing Internet infrastructure and development skill-sets and enables rapid voice application development.

Mobile communications provider MobileOne (“M1”) wanted to integrate multiple existing interactive voice response systems and to have the flexibility to rapidly add additional voice-driven services to its roster of offerings. HP consolidated M1’s voice-driven services on HP OpenCall Media Platform, a carrier-grade VoiceXML platform which supports the rapid development and secure deployment of next-generation messaging, group communications and enhanced voice-enabled interactive services. As a result, M1 customers have one-number access to all M1 services.

M1 selected the HP OpenCall solution because its media platform is based on VoiceXML, a standards-based language that M1 considered mature enough for professionally developing voice services. The HP OpenCall Media Platform gives M1 the ability to deploy additional VoiceXML-based service offerings easily and rapidly. Like all VoiceXML applications, these new services can be readily created by any development team familiar with standard XML programming.

The flexibility, extensibility and time-to-market advantages provided by VoiceXML are critical to M1’s business. “With growing demand and a more discerning customer base, we have to constantly update our IT systems to continually deliver innovative mobile services to our customers at the shortest possible time and the most convenient way,” said Patrick Scodeller, Chief Technical Officer of M1. “HP enables us to quickly integrate, deploy and push out our next-generation voice services in this very competitive business environment where time to market represents the difference between a market leader and a follower.”

The Siemens HiPath OpenScape solution is a real-time, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications software suite. It is designed to quickly and easily synchronize people, devices and information across all networks to facilitate action and decision-making.

As a presence-enhanced and permission-based collaboration portal, the HiPath OpenScape solution:

• Resides on the Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS) platform.
• Integrates directly into existing workflow applications through a Web services toolkit.
• Provides a real-time presence views of users, groups and devices associated within business applications.
• Includes speech-enabled conferencing and collaboration.

The HiPath OpenScape solution brings full-spectrum presence capabilities to enterprises with growing numbers of mobile and nomadic workers who are most effective when collaborative processes are unified. For example, a manager at an insurance company can see a presence-enabled view of the entire team of available quote experts, including the best devices to use for real-time contact with these experts. This entire collaboration process would be directly integrated into the enterprise’s insurance-quoting application, giving the manager the ability to immediately resolve the customer’s question at the initial point of contact.

As a result, the HiPath OpenScape solution accelerates critical revenue-generating business process and makes organizations more competitive.

Through its powerful design concept of “associated devices,” OpenScape extends the presence-based communication paradigm to non-SIP devices, including PBX phones, mobile phones and other telephony devices. All that is required is a SIP gateway between OpenScape and the telephony network.

The Voice Portal in OpenScape, powered by Vocalocity’s VoiceXML Browser, enables telephone access to e-mail, voice mail, contact lists, calendars, workgroups, documents and more. Using touchtone commands or directed speech, OpenScape users can also access the OpenScape Web application to change their presence status, specify a preferred phone and even initiate conference calls with predefined workgroups.

The top-rated, award-winning HiPath OpenScape solution features a self-service portal that gives users the power to create custom greetings on their own Web pages. Web page content can be read to the caller by the Vocalocity-powered Media Server. Following are a few of the capabilities that callers can take advantage of when they access the HiPath OpenScape’s self-service portal:

• Voicemail functions: leave a message, transfer from voicemail
• Microsoft Outlook Calendar functions: with a user-provided password, the guest can schedule, cancel or modify appointments with the user and receive email confirmation of an appointment
• Document access functions: read or retrieve by e-mail or fax a document stored in Microsoft Exchange folders

The HiPath OpenScape architecture reflects Siemens’ corporate commitment to standards and innovation. The clear choice for the voice presentation layer of the HiPath OpenScape portal, VoiceXML, was selected because it is a true standard with broad industry support. VoiceXML capably delivers the HiPath OpenScape solution’s feature-rich voice interface, interoperating seamlessly with the portal’s open, service-oriented architecture.