New voice portal hosting customer: Verkehrsverbund Grossraum Nürnberg [VGN]
Excelsis wins tender for timetable information via speech recognition
Stuttgart, 06/30/2009 – Customers of Nuremberg’s public transport will soon have the possibility to obtain timetable information through a modern NLU voice portal by Excelsis. Excelsis is specialised on voice portals and won the tender from Germany’s third-largest traffic association.
VGN wants to provide traffic and timetable information anytime and anywhere, the easy and uncomplicated way. Excelsis’ offer for a multimodal hosting solution convinced the VGN team which evaluated the Europe-wide tender.
Excelsis has delivered numerous systems for speech-enabled timetable information. In Switzerland and Austria, Excelsis solutions are in place, moreover the largest Germantraffic association , Westfaelische Verkehrsgesellschaft (WVG), as well as the Road and Transport Authority of the Emirate of Dubai rely on our solutions. At the moment, even more international projects in the field of transport and logistics are being planned.
Callers can obtain timetable and tariff information for thousands of stops, locations and points of interest 24/7 and plan their journey. A clever dialog guides the caller through the voice portal and quickly provides the information needed. The system recognises naturally spoken input for information on departure and arrival (location and time) and preferred means of transport. Additional information about temporary operating delays can also be provided. Email, fax or SMS are supported optionally. The dialogue is not rigidly tied to a few inputs, but actively controlled by the user. The system flexibly reacts to the caller’s input and can process several pieces of information simultaneously and confirm or correct it. The personalisation option is an especially user-friendly feature. The system is able to identify the caller via his phone number and offer a particularly quick and efficient dialog.
The advantages of intelligent user-controlled voice portals are obvious: Callers don’t have to wait but are answered immediately. They navigate through flexible dialogs and give input about routes, arrival and departure times in complete sentences. Variations like “now”, “tomorrow”, “in the evening” or “arrival at 3 p.m.” are understood as well. Search results are intelligently summarised and can be repeated if necessary.
Companies from the public transport sector profit from a rapid rollout and high economic viability. Excelsis offers the speech-enabled timetable information as on-site solution at our customer’s premises or as hosted solution within the "Software as a Service" model. The relevant advantages of the SaaS model are that investments into technical infrastructure are not necessary and rollouts can be done very quickly. The Excelsis voice portal integrates with technologies and products of leading suppliers such as Mentz [public transportation planning server], Nuance [speech recognition – ASR and speech synthesis - TTS] and Voxeo’s VoiceObjects Server for the development and operation of multimodal self service portals.
All of Excelsis‘ solutions allow for individual configuration of dialogs and functions. 24/7 availability relieves the call centre from routine tasks and helps to improve consumer acceptance of phone-based timetable information.
Christian Sauter, CEO of Excelsis points out: "The speaking timetable ideally complements the existing information and service features. Users of public transport can plan their journeys comfortably and flexibly.”
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.
Contact
Excelsis Business Technology AG
Maria Widra
Wilhelmsplatz 8
70182 Stuttgart
Phone +49 711 620 30 425
maria.widra@excelsisnet.com
Speaking Timetable
"Excelsis Speaking Timetable" offers easy information on departure and arrival times from every phone and in several languages via natural speech dialogs.
VGN serves an area of 11.750 km², which makes it the third largest traffic association in Germany. More than 90 transportation companies with 540 bus and rail services route more than 830.000 passengers a day.
