New self services voice portal makes shopping at IKEA easier
IKEA Germany uses a system by Excelsis and Voxeo VoiceObjects to improve customer satisfaction and to reduce costs
Stuttgart / Bergisch Gladbach, 02/16/2009 – The Swedish furniture giant IKEA recently implemented a new self services phone portal, which was developed by Excelsis. It was designed, developed and integrated using the phone application server and the development tools of Voxeo VoiceObjects. The voice portal offers numerous services, such as product availability checks for more than 10.000 products, a local store finder, information on shipping costs and payment options as well as text message notifications.
The principal aim of the new portal was to guarantee the highest customer satisfaction possible. IKEA thereby concentrated on automating the most usual and easy to answer customer requests. Callers that have more complex or individual requests are first questioned about the most important aspects and then immediately transferred to an IKEA customer care agent. The agent has all relevant information on his screen at the first ring tone. By automating simple calls and rapidly transferring more complex ones, waiting time can be reduced significantly, which results in higher customer satisfaction. In addition, the new voice portal has to provide a flexible and future proof platform, which allows IKEA to react rapidly to changing market requirements without compromising on quality.
IKEA’s voice portal is based on customised versions of several Excelsis applications for speech enabled self-services. The application server used is a high-performance OEM version of Voxeo’s Voice Objects Server. The technology deployed is one of the globally leading telephony based communication solutions.
IKEA contracted Excelsis to carry out the project. To realise the new voice portal, the technology of Voxeo VoiceObjects was used. This allowed Excelsis, and at the same time IKEA, to design the speech portal very flexibly and to rapidly implement a comfortable and intelligent speech enabled user interface for IKEA’s customers. The new solution can be easily adapted and extended, for example to include seasonal topics, such as specific advertising or special offers. Additional benefit is provided by the comprehensive possibilities of the CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) and VoiceXML platform offered by Excelsis and VoiceObjects.
„IKEA has recognised the importance of high quality self services via phone“, Christian Sauter, CEO of Excelsis emphasises. “In this way, IKEA can answer some of the fundamental questions like how to improve customer service, increase customer satisfaction and boost profits – and to keep costs of operation low at the same time. IKEA’s new speech portal now closes the gap between customer orientation on the one and cost efficiency on the other hand.
“We are happy VoiceObjects has been chosen to provide the technology for the state-of-the-art voice portal of IKEA“, states Michael Codini, CTO and president of VoiceObjects Germany. “This new voice portal allows IKEA to balance excellent customer service and cost control. Especially in times of global recession, the importance of this balance can’t be overestimated.”
This opinion is confirmed by Hans Schauer, Manager Service Center IKEA Germany: „This innovative solution perfectly matches IKEA’s philosophy: to change peoples’ daily life for the better. Customer needs are clearly at the heart of our new voice portal, where our customers have access to information concerning the design of their personal environment 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
To reach these ambitious goals is impossible without optimal cooperation of all parties. “Excelsis’ high competence, combined with VoiceObjects’ outstanding technology were the basis to successfully implement a project of this order of magnitude” adds Dr. Ingo Bors, project manager and independent consultant.
About Excelsis
Excelsis is one of the internationally leading vendors of self service solutions based on voice and web portals. With our software, companies from different branches automate their contact centre processes. Excelsis delivers products and solutions for almost all industries including financial services, health care, telecommunications, media and entertainment, retailing, logistics and public transportation.
We work for companies such as Cablecom, Deutsche Telekom, Ikea, Medion, Orange, Siemens, Swisscom, UBS or Vattenfall. We are building partnerships with companies from the fields of technology, system integration and consulting.
About Voxeo
Voxeo eases communication and, through its technology, allows for easy and economic realisation, administration, analysis and optimisation of unified communication and self-services applications for voice, SMS, IM, Twitter, web chat and mobile web. Voxeo continuously works on improving the benefit of such communication solutions through open standards and innovations. The company passionately fights for its customers’ success. More than 100.000 developers and 45.000 companies (among them half of the Fortune 100) use solutions by Voxeo. Voxeo supports customers, partners and developers from all over the world: Orlando, Beijing, Cologne and London. Do you want to know more? Then visit their web site www.voxeo.com or communicate to them via blogs.voxeo.com or twitter.com/Voxeo.
Voxeo´s VoiceObjects products are the globally leading solutions for efficient development, provision, administration and analysis of self-services applications. These solutions enable companies and mobile network operators to reduce the complexity and costs of innovative phone-based services and improve customer satisfaction at the same time. VoiceObjects design once-deploy anywhere-architecture makes it easy to develop an application once and use it on all phone based channels available, such as voice, video, text (IM, SMS, USSD) and operate it on the mobile web.
All of Voxeo’s products and services are available for free as developer versions. Please visit: www.voxeo.com/free.
Contact
Excelsis Business Technology AG
Maria Widra
Wilhelmsplatz 8
70182 Stuttgart
Phone +49 711 620 30 425
maria.widra@excelsisnet.com
Voxeo Germany GmbH
Sabine Winterkamp
Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse
51429 Bergisch Gladbach
Phone +49 2204 845 142
swinterkamp@voxeo.com
Ikea offers a wide range of well shaped and functional furniture at prices that allow as many people as possible to buy them. This idea is at the heart of everything Ikea does - from product development and buying processes up to the way products are sold in Ikea stores around the world. At Ikea, customers can find the furniture they like because the raw materials are used optimally and production was adjusted accordingly.
To develop its industry solutions, Excelsis relies on Voxeo's VoiceObjects technology.
