Communication about products and services is a fundamental part of the enterprise's marketing plan. However, calls for information about a catalog items often request specific handling that does not generate any immediate value for the enterprise.
In the retail sector for example, the key challenge is to convert inbound calls for information into actual orders.

Because of its capability to drive automated dialogs to browse database contents, VocaBase® is an ideal solution to integrate self-services 24*7*265 access to products and services information into call centers.

Such a system may be integrated with upstream auto-attendant system, even if only to take the opportunity of the customer contact to speak about new products instead of using a waiting tone or music.
Once the caller finds an interesting product or service, VocaBase® enters into an automated ordering dialog or executes a downstream transfer to live sales agents to manage the ordering process.

The template includes a data model that describes products and services in terms of reference, name, category, features, detailed description, target public, price, availability and delivery.
The VocaBase® database is synchronized with the existing company products database, either in real-time or in batch mode, depending on the frequency of changes in the catalog.

Thanks to the integration of speech recognition the caller may express his search criteria at any time throughout the dialog process, by telling the system the name, category or features of the requested products.
VocaBase® can also guide first callers who don't know about the products published on the voice portal by prompting them with automatic proposals resulting from an on-line analysis of the indexes hierarchy in the product database.
Depending on the marketing mix strategy of the company, some products may be assigned an individual relative "weight" in order to put some products forward in the voice portal, for example during promotion campaigns.

Thanks to the use of Text-to-Speech technology, customers are dynamically prompted and guided through the catalog of products and services, so that the Voice Portal always publishes the latest up-to-date information.

Typical dialogs may lead to the following transactions :

• Get the list of products that match particular criteria.
• Get the detailed description of a particular product, including features, price and availability information.
• Transfer to an automated dialog or to a live sales agent for ordering.

• Increased customer satisfaction with access to detailed marketing information on products and services anywhere at anytime 24 * 7 * 365.
• Complete multilingual service (foreign clients may receive information in their own language).
• Dialogs are automatically adapted to any update in the published catalog.
• Support of promotional strategies by products relative to weight assignment.
• Costs savings in call center operations.