IVR Solutions

Speech-enabled VoiceXML Upgrade for Healthcare Provider
A very large prescription and healthcare services company engaged PSS to provide a fully speech-enabled VoiceXML upgrade to their legacy touch-tone IVR.  As part of the upgrade, they wanted a more robust integration to back-end systems so callers could have easier access to health and prescription information, refills, billing, and general services through the IVR.  The customer had already implemented web services on the back end that would be made available to the new IVR applications to be developed by PSS.

During this detailed discovery phase, PSS leaned that some of the project's initial assumptions about the available web services were incorrect. The web services already implemented by the customer were not robust enough to support all of the functionality expected in the new IVR system. 

Instead of triggering weeks of additional custom integration work to compensate, PSS introduced FlexxBridge Integration Server to "bridge the gap" between the customer's existing back end system interfaces and the transaction requirements of the new IVR application. Despite the additional integration requirements that surfaced during the discovery phase, FlexxBridge allowed the project to meet the original deployment schedule and remain very close to the originally agreed-upon budget.

International IVR Integration Spans Three Continents
One of the world's largest global financial institutions retained PSS to help them transition from legacy IVR systems to next-generation IP-IVR systems in all of their international contact centers. They selected a VoiceXML-based IVR system from Holly, which natively supports a VoIP/SIP telephony interface. The customer also selected an industry-dominant gateway vendor to provide connectivity between existing TDM switches and the new IP-IVR.

It became apparent with the very first installation that the dominant gateway vendor did not support E1-Hookflash in their standard product. The gateway vendor offered to add this feature to its standard product, but only if the customer would agree to a multi-million dollar purchase commitment. With the customer feeling exploited by a major vendor, PSS demonstrated its ability to respond quickly with FlexxGate. Within 24 hours, PSS had developed and demonstrated E1-Hookflash support on its FlexxGate Media Gateway. The customer responded by deploying FlexxGate on three continents to support 100% of their international IP-IVR systems.

Custom IVR Solution Does Number Translation for a Large Hotel

A large Vegas hotel wanted to use its Nortel Meridian CS1000 to handle room-to-room calls, but they needed unusual dialing plans to accommodate room numbers that ranged from three to five digits.  Their CS1000 could not be configured to route calls properly with the desired plans and calling rules, so for years they had been completing room-to-room calls through a very old IVR system as a workaround.  Over time, the old IVR's analog line interface cards had been failing and could not be replaced- gradually reducing the system's capacity.

With a major event taking place at the hotel in ten days, the current system would not be able to handle the skyrocketing room-to-room traffic the event would generate.  The customer needed a new solution deployed very quickly.

Instead of looking at this as an IVR function, PSS suggested they look at this as a translation between legacy TDM and their CS1000 telephony interface.  When a guest places a call, the CS1000 routes all room-to-room calls to the FlexxGate.  FlexxGate collects the dialed room number using in-band signaling and translates this number to the room's actual phone number that maps to the CS1000 dialing plan. FlexxGate then performs a hookflash transfer, releasing the call back to the CS1000 for routing to the appropriate room. 

Within five days, PSS configured and deployed a FlexxGate to solve the customer's problem- for less than 20% of the cost of other solutions they considered.