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CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) is a general term to
describe the use of computers to manage incoming telephone calls.
Typically, the first voice you will hear when phoning any large
company will be a computer generated menu, designed to direct your
call to the correct department or agent.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) expands on CTI to provide
personalised voice feedback to collect, validate and store data
that the caller supplies through the DTMF tones generated by their
touchtone keypad. This data can be stored in a corporate database
or used to trigger an external process. The call can also be passed
to an agent with the customer details pre-validated with the caller
information stored in a system for the agent to see.
Penguin Computers are an
authorised SQLphone partner and have experience in deploying
the advanced SQLphone software to meet customers CTI / IVR requirements.
SQLphone has been chosen primarily because of its flexibility and
reliability, but also because of its ability to create and test
a working offline model of a complete system without requiring specialist
hardware. When deployed in a production environment, SQLphone runs
on standard PC hardware and uses industry standard Intel Dialogic
voice processing cards to provide the capability to handle many
simultaneous calls from one PC.
SQLphone
responds to user input and can play either static prerecorded prompts,
or combine static prompts to speak back numbers, dates, times and
phrases for a more natural sounding response. For a truly dynamic
system, SQLphone integrates with TTS (Text To Speech) speech synthesis
engines to read back customer data retrieved from a database.
SQLphone
can also transfer calls to customer service agents and either read
back customer details, or store the details in a database for the
agent to pick up. It can also function as a dial-out application,
for example initiating calls to confirm bookings, appointments or
collect other data from the called person.
SQLphone
is controlled by a flowchart of your design. It can run external
programs, send email and manipulate any ODBC compliant back-end
database to validate customer identity to check stock levels or
account details to store customer entered data, such as bookings
or meter readings to make a flowchart routing decision. Penguin
Computers can provide consultancy to implement the best solution
to meet your CTI / IVR requirements.
The usage of SQLphone is limited only by your imagination. Some
typical uses for the software include :
- Order status checking
- Invoice details
- Call routing
- Call Centre call handling
- Account balances
- Inventory & stock level inquiry
- Automated meter readings
- Validating callers before passing to a customer service agent
- Opinion polls or voting
- Consumer product feedback
- Market data collection
- Customer Service call updates
- Employee opinion
- Field sales call scoring
- Cinema schedule information
- Time Recording or Timesheet entry
- Parcel tracking
- Appointment confirmation
- Courier booking
We have interactive demonstrations
of SQLphone available by simply phoning 0870
708 26 27.
The SQLphone designer is available for free download and allows the technically literate to create and model
a complete dial-in system. Alternatively, Penguin Computers provide
a complete customised automated response solution.
We have experience of integration with MS SQL Server, Oracle and
Access databases and can help you design, test, build and implement
your fully bespoke CTI and IVR system.
Please email us at sqlphone@penguinit.co.uk
for further information. We would also be pleased to quote for the
Dialogic voice cards and any other necessary hardware to implement
the system that you require. Although the costs will vary from application
to application, indicative prices
are available.
We also provide a complete 'rent-a-line' solution where we create
the interactive system for you and run it on our dedicated hardware.
Your callers access the system through either 0800 (freephone),
0845 (local rate), 0870 (national rate) or 09xx (premium rate) numbers.
'Rent-a-Line' can then email the data collected or make it available
on a website at a schedule to suit your business.
'Rent-a-Line' handles either a single or multiple concurrent calls
and removes the need for you to purchase, configure and maintain
the software and specialised hardware and requires no IT
expertise on your part.
email us at rent-a-line@penguinit.co.uk
for further details.
Glossary :
DTMF - (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) is the sound made when
you press the digits on your touchtone phone keypad. These tones
are detected by the SQLphone system and used to guide the user through
menus or to collect data from them.
CLI / CLID - (Caller Line ID) is the system used to present
the callers phone number to the person receiving the call. SQLphone
can detect the caller's number (where provided by your phone company
and not witheld by the caller) and recognise frequent or previous
callers and provide them with personalised information.
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