Government
Of course we can’t talk about all our customers in the government sector, but we’re seeing a lot of growth in this vertical--particularly among state agencies in the U.S. To simplify procurement, PSS is on the Federal Government’s GSA schedule. Many state and local governments are able to purchase off the GSA schedule as well. In California, PSS is on the CMAS schedule for state purchases.
CTI for State Unemployment Division
The unemployment services division for a large western state wisely foresaw a looming recession and expected a sharp increase in unemployment claims. Knowing this would put significant strain on their call center infrastructure, they needed to expand capacity and increase efficiency so they could properly serve their constituents.
One of the projects PSS tackled for the division was a version upgrade and overall tune-up of their existing Genesys CTI infrastructure. PSS analyzed traffic between the state’s two call center sites and determined that the number of voice trunks between the sites was a bottleneck that caused cascading effects on routing efficiency at each site when the trunks were all busy.
To optimize the system, PSS increased the number of voice trunks connecting the two sites and modified the call routing strategies so calls could be routed to available agents at either site. Now as traffic spikes hit each call center throughout the day, new calls will automatically overflow to the other site so calls don't get queued at one site while agents are sitting idle at the other. This "tune up" approach allowed the state to save taxpayers money by utilizing existing resources more efficiently. The system allows the state's contact center to handle more calls without having to hire additional agents.
An agency of a large state government was working with PSS to transition from a legacy IVR system a new VoiceXML-based IVR system. Instead of using text-to-speech for the IVR application prompts, the agency preferred using concatenated recordings of live voice talent. Managing concatenated prompts was a very simple thing to do in most legacy IVR platforms, so the customer assumed this would be the case in VoiceXML as well.
In VoiceXML it is very simple to play prompts using text-to-speech or a single file of recorded audio. But it turns out that assembling a prompt using multiple recordings is not particularly intuitive and requires more programming effort in VoiceXML. Not wanting to burden its developers with this change, the state agency asked PSS to find a way to handle concatenated prompts in their new VoiceXML IVR as easily as they could in their legacy IVR system.
PSS leveraged the FlexxBridge Integration Server's flexible architecture to provide an easy solution for the state agency. PSS created a built-in class that provides a fully compliant subdialog or "branch" application that manages concatenated prompt transactions for any VoiceXML application. This allows developers to simply specify a "format" (such as date, time, currency, or number) in which to read a string of numbers using concatenated prompts.
Managing transitions is about more than managing technology changes. PSS's ability to swiftly develop a feature in FlexxBridge in this case helped state agency employees remain comfortable and more easily accept a significant change in their IVR infrastructure.
IVR Integration for a State Government Agency
An agency of a large state government was working with PSS to transition from a legacy IVR system a new VoiceXML-based IVR system. Instead of using text-to-speech for the IVR application prompts, the agency preferred using concatenated recordings of live voice talent. Managing concatenated prompts was a very simple thing to do in most legacy IVR platforms, so the customer assumed this would be the case in VoiceXML as well.
In VoiceXML it is very simple to play prompts using text-to-speech or a single file of recorded audio. But it turns out that assembling a prompt using multiple recordings is not particularly intuitive and requires more programming effort in VoiceXML. Not wanting to burden its developers with this change, the state agency asked PSS to find a way to handle concatenated prompts in their new VoiceXML IVR as easily as they could in their legacy IVR system.
PSS leveraged the FlexxBridge Integration Server's flexible architecture to provide an easy solution for the state agency. PSS created a built-in class that provides a fully compliant subdialog or "branch" application that manages concatenated prompt transactions for any VoiceXML application. This allows developers to simply specify a "format" (such as date, time, currency, or number) in which to read a string of numbers using concatenated prompts.
Managing transitions is about more than managing technology changes. PSS's ability to swiftly develop a feature in FlexxBridge in this case helped state agency employees remain comfortable and more easily accept a significant change in their IVR infrastructure.