Ivrs Seminar Report 2
Content
ABSTRACT
In today’s competitive world any business must build flexible systems that adapt easily to evolving requirements of the critical business processes. IVRS is one such system that transforms the traditional business model into customer centric model. IVRS is historically interactive speech memory driven that walk the caller through a series of prompts where they respond to questions by pressing the combination of one or more buttons of the phone keypad. The decision tree associated with the prompts and the responses will route the caller to information they desire. These IVRS systems are typically utilized to check bank account balance, buy and sell stocks, check the show times for your favorite movie. In telephony, Intelligent Voice Response, or IVR, is a phone technology that allows a computer to detect voice and touch tones using a normal phone call. The IVR system can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct callers on how to proceed. IVR systems can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices. Once constructed IVR systems generally scale well to handle large call volumes.
CONTENTS
SR. NO. TITLE CERTIFICATE SPONSORSHIP LETTER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Aim Of The Project 1.2 Brief History Of IVRS 1.3 Literature Survey/ Technological Survey 1.3.1 Technologies used 1.3.2 An IVR can be utilized in several different ways 1.4 Recent Trends And Development In The Field 2. DETAILS OF TOPIC AND ANALYSIS 2.1 Principle Of IVRS 2.2 Sequence Followed In The IVRS Service 2.3 General Description About Telephony 2.3.1 On-Hook 2.3.2 Off-Hook 2.3.3 Signaling Tones 2.4 Telephone Interface Section 2.4.1 Ring Detector Section 2.4.2 Ring activating signals 2.4.3 Optocoupler 2.5 Design Flow Of Hardware And Software 3. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF IVRS 3.1 Block Diagram Explanation TITLE PAGE NO. I II III IV V VII 1 2 2 4 5 5 7 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 12 12 12 13 13 14 14
3.1.1 Ring Decoder 3.1.2 DTMF Decoder 3.1.3 Microcontroller 3.1.4 Relay 3.1.5 MAX 232 3.1.6 Isolation Transformer 3.1.7 Voice Card 4. SYSTEM DESIGN 4.1 Selection of DTMF Decoder 4.2 Selection of Microcontroller 4.3 Selection of Relay 4.4 Selection of MAX 232 4.5 Selection of Computer 5. 6. WORKING OF THE PROJECT SOFTWARE TO BE USED: 6.1 Advantages of using Visual Basic 6.0 6.2 Advantages using MS-Access 2003 7. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING IVR SYSTEMS 7.1Advantages 7.2 Disadvantages 8. APPLICATIONS 8.1 Banking & Finance 8.2 Education 8.3 Government 8.4 Telecommunications 9. FUTURE ASPECTS CONCLUSION REFERENCES
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Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION
What can be done using an Inter voice System? When connecting an Inter-voice system into telephone lines (either analog lines or digital T1/E1 trunks), the applications can handle either incoming or outgoing calls and then perform the following voice processing features: • • • • DTMF or pulse tone input Provides unlimited pre- recorded voice messages Live recording of customer messages Accesses or stores information to and from the back-end host, database or the Internet • Uses leading speech recognition technology to process either spoken words or full sentences Who should use Inter voice? Using Inter voice hardware and software, we have developed voice automation applications, which can: • • • • Transfer the customer calls to the right people to handle Provide the most updated product or service information Record customer messages for follow up later Perform automated transaction processing without human intervention.
What are interactive voice response (IVR) systems? Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems allow callers to interact with the communications system over the telephone. IVR is used to enable the caller to retrieve information from a database, enter information into a database, or both. IVR systems allow the user to efficiently exchange information, reducing clerical processing.
How It Works? An IVR system talks to callers following a recorded script. It prompts a response to the caller and asks him to respond either verbally or by pressing a touchtone key, and supplies the caller with information based on responses made. What are important features of IVR systems? IVR system should store responses made by callers. Should be able to provide different responses to callers based on time of day called. Should be able to capture either touch-tone or voice responses by callers. 1.1AIM OF THE PROJECT We have decided to choose this topic “IVRS” because • • • • IVRS is a Acronym for Intelligent Voice Response System The system used is Intelligent for Interaction Will consider the nature of the user, to provide the correct response. And will provide the user with all sorts of related information for his concern
So we have decided it to implement this system for educational purpose i.e. marks enrollment. 1.2 BRIEF HISTORY OF IVRS CALL centres originated as a cost-cutting measure by US companies several decades ago, but they only really started to take off in the UK in the 1970s. The initial centres were in-house operations in larger organizations and they tended to share and be formed by the same basic assumptions and drivers. The idea was that if you could cluster the majority of telephone based contacts with the customer in a single department you could have people focused just on call-related services. Several advantages would follow. First, as a coherent department focused on telephone services, such a ‘centre’ could be managed more coherently. A second motive was that through careful management of the centre, you would inevitably get the benefit of having more calls handled by fewer people.
Steve Morrell, Managing Director at ContactBabel, an organization that specializes in analyzing the call centre market, points out that this early focus on ‘efficiency’ and cost cutting, in a sense, got the call centre industry started off on the wrong foot - at least in relation to current ‘best practice’ "It meant that the whole industry focused on measuring things such as call lengths, or time to resolution. The faster the operator could complete a call, the more efficient and effective the contact with the customer was deemed to be," he explains. Divide the number of calls by the number of operators, and you could see at a glance how ‘efficiently’ your centre was operating. The bigger the number, the better. The shorter the call duration and the shorter the time to resolution, the better. There were obvious problems with this approach. First, it led to a ‘sweat the agent’ attitude, since the pressure was on to set call centre agents more and more ‘stretching’ targets by way of calls per hour that they were supposed to complete. Second, it led to a high turnover in staff as people became burned out by the pressure cooker atmosphere. Since the costs of training a call centre agent are not trivial (Morrell puts them at around £6,000 per agent on average), a high staff turnover leads to high costs. A third issue, which took rather longer for companies to grasp, was that agents were not being given the opportunity to learn very much about the customer, or to add much value to the customer’s relationship with the organization. In fact in many instances an emphasis on keeping call times as brief as possible would actually cause the agent, at best, to sound impersonal and unsympathetic to the customer. At worst the experience would be decidedly unsatisfactory and would possibly do lasting damage to the company’s brand and reputation in the customer’s eyes. Morrell points out that call centres were given a huge boost in the UK in the 1980s when telecoms deregulation led to a fall in the price of fixed line calls. Channeling contact to the customer through the telephone became an even more cost effective option for companies. Since the UK led the way in telecoms deregulation in Europe, this was a major factor in the UK having more call centre seats than any country with the exception of the US. We
currently have in excess of 800,000 call centre places across the UK, and the number is projected to go beyond 1,000,000 within the next three years. Colin Mackay, a Director of the industry body, the Call Centre Managers Association (CCMA), points out that pioneering centre set up by Direct Line and then by First Direct, proved how powerful these centres could be for financial services organizations. "It meant that they could reach large numbers of the public without the requirement for sales people on the street," he said. As Mackay notes, about 80% of the questions that people have about financial services products, from mortgages to loans and insurance, can be answered over the phone, without the need for a face-to-face meeting. Operations such as Direct Line were able to demonstrate considerable cost savings and efficiencies over conventional financial services product distribution strategies. Scotland and the north-east of England did very well out of the first two decades of call centre operations in the UK. As Mackay explains, call centre operators tended to favour regions outside the expensive south-east of England, where building premises were far cheaper, and where there was a reasonably well-educated potential work force. The fact that the north-east of England and Scotland had seen a massive decline in their heavy industries meant that there was also competitive pressure for jobs, so wages were more competitive too, than down south. 1.3 LITERATURE SURVEY/ TECHNOLOGICAL SURVEY A Survey was carried by us was found that the system we are going to implement is not present in any of the college in “Pune University” Literature related to our topic is as follows: • Interactive voice technology development For telecommunications applications A Speech and Acoustics Laboratory, NTT Human Intel face Laboratories, Japan • Efficient client–server based implementations of mobile speech recognition services
Richard C. Rose a,*, Iker Arizmendi b, 1 a McGill University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, • Analyzing interactive voice services Kenneth J. Turner * Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK 1.3.1 Technologies used DTMF signals (entered from the telephone keypad) and natural language speech recognition interpret the caller's response to voice prompts. Other technologies include the ability to speak complex and dynamic information such as an e-mail, news report or weather information using Text-To-Speech (TTS). TTS is computer generated synthesized speech that is no longer the robotic voice generally associated with computers. Real voices create the speech in tiny fragments that are spliced together (concatenated) before being played to the caller. 1.3.2 An IVR can be utilized in several different ways: 1. Equipment installed on the customer premise 2. Equipment installed in the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) 3. Application service provider (ASP). 4. Virtual Hosted IVR Many business applications employ this technology including telephone banking, order placement, caller identification and routing, balance inquiry, and airline ticket booking. A simple Voicemail system is different from an IVR in that it is person to person whereas an IVR is person to computer. IVR Voice forms can be used to provide a more complex voicemail experience to the caller. For example, the IVR could ask if the caller wishes to hear, edit, forward or remove a message that was just recorded. An Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is often the first point of contact when calling many larger businesses. An ACD uses digital storage devices to play greetings or
announcements, but typically routes a caller without prompting for input. An IVR can play announcements and request an input from the caller. This information can be used to route the call to a particular skillset. (A skillset is a function applied to a group of callcenter agents with a particular skill) Interactive voice response can be used to front-end a call center operation by identifying the needs of the caller. Information can be obtained from the caller such as account numbers. Answers to simple questions such as account balances or pre-recorded information can be provided without operator intervention. Account numbers from the IVR are often compared to caller ID data for security reasons and additional IVR responses are required if the caller ID data does not match the account record. IVR call flows are created in a variety of ways. A traditional IVR depended upon proprietary programming or scripting languages, whereas modern IVR applications are structured similar to WWW pages, using VoiceXML, SALT or T-XML languages. The ability to use XML developed applications allows a Web server to act as an application server, freeing the developer to focus on the call flow. It was widely believed that developers would no longer require specialized programming skills, however this has been proven to be misguided as IVR applications need to understand the human reaction to the application dialogue. This is the difference between a good user experience and IVR hell. Higher level IVR development tools are available in recent years to further simplify the application development process. A call flow diagram can be drawn with a GUI tool and the application code (VoiceXML or SALT) can be automatically generated. In addition, these tools normally provide extension mechanisms for software integration, such as HTTP interface to web site and Java interface for connecting to a database. In telecommunications, an audio response unit (ARU) is a device that provides synthesized voice responses to touch-tone key presses (DTMF) by processing calls based on (a) the call-originator input, (b) information received from a database, and (c) information in the incoming call, such as the time of day. ARUs increase the number of information calls handled and to provide consistent quality in information retrieval.
1.4 RECENT TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIELD It has become more common in industries that have recently entered the telecom industry to refer to an Automated Attendant as an IVR. This means that when discussing an IVR application, it is important to ensure that the person you are talking to understand the term to mean the same thing as you do. Generally-speaking, those with a traditional telecom background are more likely to refer to an Automated Attendant and IVR as separate things, whereas those from an Emerging Telephony or VoIP background are more likely to use the term IVR to define any kind of telephony menu, even the most basic Automated Attendant. First IVR System / 1991 ITD successfully implemented the first interactive voice response systems in Turkey at Pamukbank*, Yapý Kredi Bank and Akbank. First Digital IVR / 1992 ITD made the implementation of the first biggest digital IVR system in Turkey. First National Switch Center (BKM) / 1993 ITD has important contributions at the formation of the first and only transaction switching system project of Turkey. The system is implemented jointly by BKM, Deluxe Data International and ITD. This EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) switch provides ATM & POS sharing capabilities among member banks and serves as a critical link between First Introduction of CTI Concept / 1994 ITD introduced the first Computer Telephony Integration at Biliþim '94. ITD became the distributor of Genesys's Computer First Speaker Independent Voice Recognition / 1995 ITD realized the first speaker independent
First Internet Integrated Call Center / 1998 ITD began to work on the first internet integrated call center project at Garanti Bank and successfully made the implementation in February '99. First Speech Recognition System / 2000 ITD launched Turkey’s First Speech-Enabled Call Automation System in July 2001 with Global Menkul Deðerler. Callers dial the main number, respond to various voice prompts using the Turkish language, and tell the system the company name
Chapter 2. DETAILS OF TOPIC AND ANALYSIS
2.1 PRINCIPLE OF IVRS Interactive voice response refers to technology supporting the interaction of customer with the service provider generally over the telephone lines. When a person wants to access any of the services of the Interactive Voice Response System, he presses a number through his telephone keypad. The pressed number appears across the line and the ring detector circuit senses this ring. After a specified number of rings the relay is activated through the microcontroller, which in turn connects the line to DTMF decoder. The activation of relay causes the number pressed to appear across the DTMF decoder. The decoder decodes the number pressed and then the decoder output is passed through the microcontroller to the computer. Now, when the caller presses a number, the number pressed is decoded by the DTMF decoder and passed to the computer through the microcontroller using MAX232. The computer recognizes the number and accesses the particular file from the database to output the voice message. The output voice is passed through the voice card where the digitized serial data is converted into analog voice form and passed to the line. The caller gets the information through the line. 2.2 SEQUENCE FOLLOWED IN THE IVRS SERVICE • • Caller dials the IVRS service number. The computer waits for a specified number of ringing tones at the end of which, the connection is established. • The connection is established by lifting the handset of telephone base from ONHOOK condition.
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Now, a pre-recorded voice greets the caller conforming that the number dialed corresponding to the particular service.
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Next, the menu is presented to the caller again in the voice form, giving him the various options to choose from.
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If the information to be relayed back is confidential, then the system may even ask the dialer, to feed in a password number.
• • •
The database is accordingly referenced and the necessary information is obtained. Next, the same information is put across to the user in voice. The caller generally given the option to : a. Repeat whatever information was voiced to him. b. Repeat the choices. c. Break the call by restarting ON-HOOK condition
2.3 GENERAL DESCRIPTION ABOUT TELEPHONY Any telephone set will always be in any of the conditions mentioned below: 2.3.1 ON-HOOK It is the state whenever telephone handset is placed on the cradle. During this state, the telephone line is open circuit with the exchange and the voltage of –48 V is available on each telephone line from the exchange. 2.3.2 OFF-HOOK This is the state whenever telephone handset is displaced from the cradle. During this state the voltage level is between ± 5V to ± 12 V. The telephone OFF – HOOK resistance is typically 600 Ω . 2.3.3 SIGNALING TONES • Dial tone:
This tone indicates that the exchange is ready to accept dialed digits from the subscriber. The subscriber should start dialing only after hearing the dial tone. Otherwise, initial
dialed pulse may be missed by the exchange that may result in the call landing on the wrong number. The dialed tone is 33 Hz or 50 Hz or 400 Hz continuous tones. • Ring tone:
When the called party is obtained, the exchange sense out the ringing current to the telephone set of the called party. This ringing current has the familiar double ring pattern. Simultaneously, the exchange sends out the ringing tone to the calling subscriber, which has the pattern similar to that of ringing current, the two rings in the double ring pattern are separated by a time gap of 0.2s and two double rings patterns by a time gap of 2s.The burst has duration of 0.4s. The frequency of the ringing tone is 133 Hz or 400 Hz. • Busy tone:
Busy tone is bursty 400 Hz signal with silence period in between. The burst and silence duration has the same value of 0.75s. A busy tone is sent out to the calling subscriber whenever the switching equipment or junction line is not available to put through the call or called subscriber line is engaged. • Number unobtainable tone:
The number unobtainable tone is a continuous 400 Hz signal. This tone may be sent to the calling subscriber due to a variety of reasons. In some exchanges this tone is 400 Hz intermittent with 2.5s ON period and 0.5s OFF period. • Routing tone:
The routing tone or call – in – progress tone is 400 Hz or 800 Hz intermittent patterns. In an electromechanical system it is usually 800Hz with 50% duty ratio and 0.5s ON-OFF period. In analog electronic exchange it is 400 Hz pattern with 0.5s ON period and 0.5s OFF period. In digital exchange it has 0.1s ON-OFF period at 400 Hz • TOUCH –TONE KEY PAD
Touching a button generates a ‘ tone’, which is a combination of two frequencies, one from lower band and other from upper band. For e.g. pressing push button ‘7’ transmits 852 and 1209 Hz.
1209Hz 1336Hz 1477Hz 697Hz 770Hz 852Hz 941Hz 7 * 8 0 9 # 1 4 2 5 3 6
Fig 2.1 Typical 4 x 3 touch keypad In the keypad ten keys of decimal digits are used to call required number. The touch-tone telephone produces decade or DTMF signals for DTMF type. The keypad produces twotone sinusoidal outputs. Rows and columns determine the frequency. This keypad is working with different frequencies but only two frequencies are transmitted at a time. So the signal coming from this type of telephone is called Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF). 2.4 TELEPHONE INTERFACE SECTION It consists of following subsections: 2.4.1 Ring Detector Section Ring detector circuit does the function of detecting the ring activating signals and then counts the number of rings. 2.4.2 Ring activating signals This is send by telephone exchange to the subscriber. This signal causes an audio tone in the subscriber’s telephone set. This ring tone is an alarming signal, which diverts the attention of the subscriber towards the instrument. The ring signal produced at the central office is composed of a 10v ac, 400Hz signal that is always present on the telephone line with the handset in ON-HOOK position. The ring-activating signal is |ON for 0.2 sec and the subscriber can hear the sound of ring in that duration of time. For next 0.4 sec the ring-activating signal goes OFF. Now the subscriber can’t hear the sound. Again this repeats for six times with the pause of 2 sec. Thus the subscriber hears six rings.
2.4.3 Optocoupler In the same application it is necessary to isolate input and output. The isolation can be achieved in many ways. One of these is to use an Opto-coupler. Opto-coupler is controlled by optical energy. 2.4.4 Construction: Optocoupler is MCT 2E. The device consists of GaAs infra red emitting diode optically coupled to a monolithic silicon phototransistor detector. 2.5 DESIGN FLOW OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Fig. 2.5.1 Design Flow of software Design Flow of Hardware
Chapter 3. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF IVRS
Fig. 3.1 Block Diagram of IVR System 3.1 BLOCK DIAGRAM EXPLANATION The main blocks of my system are as follows: • Ring Decoder • DTMF Decoder • MICROCONTROLLER • MAX 232 • Relay • Isolation Transformer • Voice Card
3.1.1 Ring Decoder Ring decoder consists of: • Bridge Rectifier • Capacitor Filter • Opto Isolator 3.1.2 DTMF Decoder In DTMF signaling, two frequencies are allocated to each digit in the push button keypad. The main function of the DTMF decoder is to detect the two frequencies and until and unless these two frequencies allocated for a particular digit are obtained, that particular digit will not be recognized by the DTMF decoder. The decoder uses digital counting technique to detect and decode all 16 DTMF tone pairs into 4 bit code. Its features are:• Complete DTMF Receiver • Low power consumption • Internal gain setting amplifier • Adjustable guard time • Central office quality • Power-down mode 3.1.3 Microcontroller • It is the central controller of the whole project. • It scans all channels continuously. • It transfers the logical values serially to the PC. • Various tasks are assigned to peripherals.
3.1.4 Relay Relay is used as a switch to provide the connection between the telephone line and the voice card as well as the DTMF decoder. 3.1.5 MAX 232 • • Convert the voltage levels. Dual driver/receiver that includes capacitive voltage generator to supply 232 voltage levels from single 5V supply. • • Each receiver converts 232 inputs to 5V TTL/CMOS levels. Each driver converts TTL/CMOS input levels into 232 levels.
3.1.6 Isolation Transformer The simplest and the most common way to do the isolation is by using audio transformer which is a 1:1 isolation transformer. 3.1.7 Voice Card It is the output device of the project. The caller will get to hear the information through the voice card.
Chapter 4. SYSTEM DESIGN
4.1 SELECTION OF DTMF DECODER This is the most important task for my project. As the number pressed by the caller is needed to be decoded before sending it to the microcontroller, a DTMF decoder is needed. For our project, we have used DTMF decoder IC8870.Its features are :• • • • • Complete DTMF Receiver Low power consumption Internal gain setting amplifier Adjustable guard time Central office quality o Power-down mode 4.2 SELECTION OF MICROCONTROLLER To achieve this task we first analyzed my needs. Those were.. • • To achieve fast operation To achieve great sensitivity
So for these we decided to select microcontroller 89C52. As it is having sufficient amount of RAM for such simple operations of reading. It supports high speed operation and has greater sensitivity when put into scanning mode of its inputs. 4.3 SELECTION OF RELAY Relays available are HK, PLA, OEN and GOODSKY. These are the different manufacturers of relays. Also, according to the DC voltages, relays available are 5V, 6V, 12V, 18V AND 24V. According to the type, relays available are SPST, DPDT and SPDT.Also, relays can be PCB mountable and Panel mountable. According to the
need of my project, I have used a 12V, DPDT, PCB mountable relay manufactured by GOODSKY. 4.4 SELECTION OF MAX 232 Actually MAX 232 is used because we wanted to have serial communication between microcontroller and computer. This supports short distance serial communication. we are using MAX 232 in IC format due to ready made availability of this. Some capacitors have to arrange along peripherals pins of this IC which we have connected in our actual circuit. Need of these capacitors is due to fact that MAX 232 datasheet shows need of such capacitors in order to pull data from one point to another point. 4.5 SELECTION OF COMPUTER Basically, we are going to implement a Visual Basic Code and a hardware depending on these VB commands. So while selecting a computer, we considered some points like whether Microsoft’s Visual Basic 6.0 is installed on this machine or not, then machine’s RAM and Hard disk space necessary to support VB environment, then secondary factors like color screen for exciting GUI and attractive model. Also, as our project needed a voice card as the output device, a personal computer with a voice card was chosen.
Chapter 5. WORKING OF THE PROJECT
• • When the telephone is in the idle condition, the voltage will be -48V. When the ringing occurs, it will be 125V peak to peak AC signal superimposed on 48V. • The opto isolator is used to isolate the microcontroller from high voltage AC signals and it consists of GaAs infrared emitting diode optically coupled to a monolithic silicon phototransistor. • The microcontroller will detect the ring through the port 1.5 and it will count the number of rings. • After a fixed number of rings, the microcontroller will send a signal to the relay and then the automatic off-hooking of the telephone takes place.At the same time, microcontroller will transmit ‘#’ to the computer which is an indication to play the ‘Welcome’ message. • The relay used is DPDT type and after automatic off-hooking takes place, the relay connects the telephone lines to the decoder IC 8870 and isolation transformer. • The transformer used is a line transformer used to isolate voice card from high voltages. • As the telephone lines are connected to the voice card, the caller gets to hear the stored messages and asks the caller to enter the roll number of the student whose result is to be known. After the caller dials the roll number from the touch tone keypad of his telephone, that number will be decoded by the decoder IC 8870 and the decoded information will be sent to the computer via the microcontroller. • Computer on receiving the decoded information will check the database to access the result of the student whose roll number is entered. • Then the computer will send the desired information to the voice card and the caller will get to hear the result of the student on his telephone through the voice card.
Chapter 6. SOFTWARE TO BE USED:
• • Visual Basic 6.0 MS –Access 2003
6.1 ADVANTAGES OF USING VISUAL BASIC 6.0 • Office/VSTO development.
The Office object model was created with optional parameters, a feature of VBA, in mind and makes heavy use of it. As Visual Basic supports this it has an advantage over C# • COM inter-op with older applications.
And in this case I am specifically referring to COM interop without a complete type library, something common in VB6 or Visual FoxPro. This is where Option Explicit Off is a great helper and time saver. 6.2 ADVANTAGES USING MS-ACCESS 2003 Although there is always overlap, the following rules might help when deciding when or when not to use MS Access: • • MS Access is best used for long-term data storage and/or data sharing. MS Excel is best used for minor data collection, manipulation, and especially visualization. • • • • SPSS is best used for minor data collection and especially data analysis. It is easy to export data from MS Access to Excel SPSS
Cheap, readily available (packaged with MS-Office Premium). Easy to use (relative to other systems –Oracle may require one FTE to maintain the server as a database administrator and another FTE to serve as an application developer).
Chapter 7. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING IVR SYSTEMS
7.1 ADVANTAGES The biggest advantage of IVR for small and large organizations is to save time and money. Answering phone calls takes a lot of time, and not every phone call deserves the attention of a trained employee. IVR systems can take care of most of the frequently asked questions that an organization receives (office hours, directions, phone directory, common tech support questions, et cetera) and allow customer service reps, salesmen and tech support specialists to concentrate on the harder stuff. If a large company is able to shave even a second off the average length of each phone call with a live operator, it can save them hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year [source: Human Factors International]. IVR systems have the advantage of making callers and customers feel like they're being attended to, even if it's just by a machine. If you have a simple question, it's better to get a quick answer from a computerized operator than to wait ten minutes on hold before talking to a human being. Another advantage is that IVR systems don't sleep. They don't take lunch breaks. They don't go on vacations to the Bahamas. An IVR system can be available 24 hours a day to field questions and help customers with simple tasks. An IVR system can make a small company look bigger. Some IVR hosting plans even set you up with an 800 number to look more official. Subscription IVR hosting plans make it easier for businesses and organizations to use these automated phone services. This is a big advantage of days past, when only large companies with big telecommunications and computing budgets could afford the hardware, software and staff to run in-house IVR systems. 7.2 DISADVANTAGES The greatest disadvantage of IVR systems is that many people simply dislike talking to machines. Older adults may have a hard time following telephone menus and lengthy instructions. And younger callers get frustrated with the slowness of multiple phone menus
Chapter 8. APPLICATIONS
8.1 BANKING & FINANCE Technological innovations have brought about not just new types of electronic money, but also new bank-customer relationships. These relationships are fuelling the demand for more and more innovative banking services such as: • • • • • • • • • Call Center with Customer Relationship Management Software Credit Card Activation System Credit Card Authorization Forex Enquiry by Speech Recognition Stock Quote By Speech Recognition Telephone Banking System Telephone Loan Approval Trade & Account Inquiry Service Voice Recording System
8.2 EDUCATION Apart from providing an environment for learning, educational establishments are now improving their quality of service, offering a better level of support to both students and to the public through: • • • • Enquiry Hotline Library Book Renewal Student Registration System Student Result Declaration System
8.3 GOVERNMENT In order to improve the efficiency of information accessibility, many government departments such as the Labour Department, the Education Department, the Immigration Department, the Inland Revenue and the Department of Health, have already implemented IVRS systems to provide hotline services. 8.4 TELECOMMUNICATIONS In this highly competitive industry, we can help telecom service providers (wire line or wireless) to develop infrastructure and add value to their services through: • • Prepaid Roaming Postpaid Calling Card, Prepaid Calling Card, and Wireless Prepaid (or Mobile Prepaid) • • • • • Mobile Number Portability Number Change Announcement Fax Stored-And-Forward Service Signaling Protocol Converters Telecom Call Center
Chapter 9. FUTURE ASPECTS
In future, the concept of Interactive Voice Response System can be used in various transport departments like Bus transport, Metro rail, Railways and Airports as the transport companies not only need to be fast and responsive, but also need to provide customers with an easily accessible information system providing: • • • • Information Enquiry Schedule Enquiry SISR Information Enquiry Teleticketing System
So, in near future, all the information regarding routes, timings etc. will be known through the Interactive Voice Response System.Also, this concept may be implemented in Cinema halls and Multiplexes where the caller will get to know the timings of his favourite movies as well as he can book his tickets through this system.
CONCLUSION
The system designed will be intelligent for interaction and will suitably provide a good response to the caller who will access it. It will be truly a responsible system for human mankind. We will make it better than the present scenario system. It will be digitally accessed and will have a strong data base and can be operated easily and of low cost. And the future will show that every organization will be using our system.
REFERENCES Websites:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response 2. http://web.cmc.net.in/products/ivrs/ivrs.asp 3. http://www.blissit.org/ivrs.htm 4. http://www.kleward.com/ivr_solutions.htm 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=information+on+IVR+system 6. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRG4C0RRMJ4&_user=7427940&_coverDate=08%2F05%2F2004&_alid=810799566&_rdoc= 6&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6234&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=7&_acct= C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=7427940&md5=58db2884bc bc7ed43d9119ed01eefe1a
Books: 1. Thiagarajan Vishwanathan/Telecommunication Switching System &
Networks/India PRI Pvt.ltd/Second Edition 2. Kenneth J.Ayala/The 8051 Microcontroller Applications/India/PRI Pvt.ltd/Second Edition 3. Douglas V.Hall/Microcontroller and Interfacing/New York/TMH Publishing Company Pvt Ltd/Second Edition Architecture ,Programming and
In today’s competitive world any business must build flexible systems that adapt easily to evolving requirements of the critical business processes. IVRS is one such system that transforms the traditional business model into customer centric model. IVRS is historically interactive speech memory driven that walk the caller through a series of prompts where they respond to questions by pressing the combination of one or more buttons of the phone keypad. The decision tree associated with the prompts and the responses will route the caller to information they desire. These IVRS systems are typically utilized to check bank account balance, buy and sell stocks, check the show times for your favorite movie. In telephony, Intelligent Voice Response, or IVR, is a phone technology that allows a computer to detect voice and touch tones using a normal phone call. The IVR system can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct callers on how to proceed. IVR systems can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices. Once constructed IVR systems generally scale well to handle large call volumes.
CONTENTS
SR. NO. TITLE CERTIFICATE SPONSORSHIP LETTER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Aim Of The Project 1.2 Brief History Of IVRS 1.3 Literature Survey/ Technological Survey 1.3.1 Technologies used 1.3.2 An IVR can be utilized in several different ways 1.4 Recent Trends And Development In The Field 2. DETAILS OF TOPIC AND ANALYSIS 2.1 Principle Of IVRS 2.2 Sequence Followed In The IVRS Service 2.3 General Description About Telephony 2.3.1 On-Hook 2.3.2 Off-Hook 2.3.3 Signaling Tones 2.4 Telephone Interface Section 2.4.1 Ring Detector Section 2.4.2 Ring activating signals 2.4.3 Optocoupler 2.5 Design Flow Of Hardware And Software 3. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF IVRS 3.1 Block Diagram Explanation TITLE PAGE NO. I II III IV V VII 1 2 2 4 5 5 7 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 12 12 12 13 13 14 14
3.1.1 Ring Decoder 3.1.2 DTMF Decoder 3.1.3 Microcontroller 3.1.4 Relay 3.1.5 MAX 232 3.1.6 Isolation Transformer 3.1.7 Voice Card 4. SYSTEM DESIGN 4.1 Selection of DTMF Decoder 4.2 Selection of Microcontroller 4.3 Selection of Relay 4.4 Selection of MAX 232 4.5 Selection of Computer 5. 6. WORKING OF THE PROJECT SOFTWARE TO BE USED: 6.1 Advantages of using Visual Basic 6.0 6.2 Advantages using MS-Access 2003 7. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING IVR SYSTEMS 7.1Advantages 7.2 Disadvantages 8. APPLICATIONS 8.1 Banking & Finance 8.2 Education 8.3 Government 8.4 Telecommunications 9. FUTURE ASPECTS CONCLUSION REFERENCES
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Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION
What can be done using an Inter voice System? When connecting an Inter-voice system into telephone lines (either analog lines or digital T1/E1 trunks), the applications can handle either incoming or outgoing calls and then perform the following voice processing features: • • • • DTMF or pulse tone input Provides unlimited pre- recorded voice messages Live recording of customer messages Accesses or stores information to and from the back-end host, database or the Internet • Uses leading speech recognition technology to process either spoken words or full sentences Who should use Inter voice? Using Inter voice hardware and software, we have developed voice automation applications, which can: • • • • Transfer the customer calls to the right people to handle Provide the most updated product or service information Record customer messages for follow up later Perform automated transaction processing without human intervention.
What are interactive voice response (IVR) systems? Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems allow callers to interact with the communications system over the telephone. IVR is used to enable the caller to retrieve information from a database, enter information into a database, or both. IVR systems allow the user to efficiently exchange information, reducing clerical processing.
How It Works? An IVR system talks to callers following a recorded script. It prompts a response to the caller and asks him to respond either verbally or by pressing a touchtone key, and supplies the caller with information based on responses made. What are important features of IVR systems? IVR system should store responses made by callers. Should be able to provide different responses to callers based on time of day called. Should be able to capture either touch-tone or voice responses by callers. 1.1AIM OF THE PROJECT We have decided to choose this topic “IVRS” because • • • • IVRS is a Acronym for Intelligent Voice Response System The system used is Intelligent for Interaction Will consider the nature of the user, to provide the correct response. And will provide the user with all sorts of related information for his concern
So we have decided it to implement this system for educational purpose i.e. marks enrollment. 1.2 BRIEF HISTORY OF IVRS CALL centres originated as a cost-cutting measure by US companies several decades ago, but they only really started to take off in the UK in the 1970s. The initial centres were in-house operations in larger organizations and they tended to share and be formed by the same basic assumptions and drivers. The idea was that if you could cluster the majority of telephone based contacts with the customer in a single department you could have people focused just on call-related services. Several advantages would follow. First, as a coherent department focused on telephone services, such a ‘centre’ could be managed more coherently. A second motive was that through careful management of the centre, you would inevitably get the benefit of having more calls handled by fewer people.
Steve Morrell, Managing Director at ContactBabel, an organization that specializes in analyzing the call centre market, points out that this early focus on ‘efficiency’ and cost cutting, in a sense, got the call centre industry started off on the wrong foot - at least in relation to current ‘best practice’ "It meant that the whole industry focused on measuring things such as call lengths, or time to resolution. The faster the operator could complete a call, the more efficient and effective the contact with the customer was deemed to be," he explains. Divide the number of calls by the number of operators, and you could see at a glance how ‘efficiently’ your centre was operating. The bigger the number, the better. The shorter the call duration and the shorter the time to resolution, the better. There were obvious problems with this approach. First, it led to a ‘sweat the agent’ attitude, since the pressure was on to set call centre agents more and more ‘stretching’ targets by way of calls per hour that they were supposed to complete. Second, it led to a high turnover in staff as people became burned out by the pressure cooker atmosphere. Since the costs of training a call centre agent are not trivial (Morrell puts them at around £6,000 per agent on average), a high staff turnover leads to high costs. A third issue, which took rather longer for companies to grasp, was that agents were not being given the opportunity to learn very much about the customer, or to add much value to the customer’s relationship with the organization. In fact in many instances an emphasis on keeping call times as brief as possible would actually cause the agent, at best, to sound impersonal and unsympathetic to the customer. At worst the experience would be decidedly unsatisfactory and would possibly do lasting damage to the company’s brand and reputation in the customer’s eyes. Morrell points out that call centres were given a huge boost in the UK in the 1980s when telecoms deregulation led to a fall in the price of fixed line calls. Channeling contact to the customer through the telephone became an even more cost effective option for companies. Since the UK led the way in telecoms deregulation in Europe, this was a major factor in the UK having more call centre seats than any country with the exception of the US. We
currently have in excess of 800,000 call centre places across the UK, and the number is projected to go beyond 1,000,000 within the next three years. Colin Mackay, a Director of the industry body, the Call Centre Managers Association (CCMA), points out that pioneering centre set up by Direct Line and then by First Direct, proved how powerful these centres could be for financial services organizations. "It meant that they could reach large numbers of the public without the requirement for sales people on the street," he said. As Mackay notes, about 80% of the questions that people have about financial services products, from mortgages to loans and insurance, can be answered over the phone, without the need for a face-to-face meeting. Operations such as Direct Line were able to demonstrate considerable cost savings and efficiencies over conventional financial services product distribution strategies. Scotland and the north-east of England did very well out of the first two decades of call centre operations in the UK. As Mackay explains, call centre operators tended to favour regions outside the expensive south-east of England, where building premises were far cheaper, and where there was a reasonably well-educated potential work force. The fact that the north-east of England and Scotland had seen a massive decline in their heavy industries meant that there was also competitive pressure for jobs, so wages were more competitive too, than down south. 1.3 LITERATURE SURVEY/ TECHNOLOGICAL SURVEY A Survey was carried by us was found that the system we are going to implement is not present in any of the college in “Pune University” Literature related to our topic is as follows: • Interactive voice technology development For telecommunications applications A Speech and Acoustics Laboratory, NTT Human Intel face Laboratories, Japan • Efficient client–server based implementations of mobile speech recognition services
Richard C. Rose a,*, Iker Arizmendi b, 1 a McGill University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, • Analyzing interactive voice services Kenneth J. Turner * Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK 1.3.1 Technologies used DTMF signals (entered from the telephone keypad) and natural language speech recognition interpret the caller's response to voice prompts. Other technologies include the ability to speak complex and dynamic information such as an e-mail, news report or weather information using Text-To-Speech (TTS). TTS is computer generated synthesized speech that is no longer the robotic voice generally associated with computers. Real voices create the speech in tiny fragments that are spliced together (concatenated) before being played to the caller. 1.3.2 An IVR can be utilized in several different ways: 1. Equipment installed on the customer premise 2. Equipment installed in the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) 3. Application service provider (ASP). 4. Virtual Hosted IVR Many business applications employ this technology including telephone banking, order placement, caller identification and routing, balance inquiry, and airline ticket booking. A simple Voicemail system is different from an IVR in that it is person to person whereas an IVR is person to computer. IVR Voice forms can be used to provide a more complex voicemail experience to the caller. For example, the IVR could ask if the caller wishes to hear, edit, forward or remove a message that was just recorded. An Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is often the first point of contact when calling many larger businesses. An ACD uses digital storage devices to play greetings or
announcements, but typically routes a caller without prompting for input. An IVR can play announcements and request an input from the caller. This information can be used to route the call to a particular skillset. (A skillset is a function applied to a group of callcenter agents with a particular skill) Interactive voice response can be used to front-end a call center operation by identifying the needs of the caller. Information can be obtained from the caller such as account numbers. Answers to simple questions such as account balances or pre-recorded information can be provided without operator intervention. Account numbers from the IVR are often compared to caller ID data for security reasons and additional IVR responses are required if the caller ID data does not match the account record. IVR call flows are created in a variety of ways. A traditional IVR depended upon proprietary programming or scripting languages, whereas modern IVR applications are structured similar to WWW pages, using VoiceXML, SALT or T-XML languages. The ability to use XML developed applications allows a Web server to act as an application server, freeing the developer to focus on the call flow. It was widely believed that developers would no longer require specialized programming skills, however this has been proven to be misguided as IVR applications need to understand the human reaction to the application dialogue. This is the difference between a good user experience and IVR hell. Higher level IVR development tools are available in recent years to further simplify the application development process. A call flow diagram can be drawn with a GUI tool and the application code (VoiceXML or SALT) can be automatically generated. In addition, these tools normally provide extension mechanisms for software integration, such as HTTP interface to web site and Java interface for connecting to a database. In telecommunications, an audio response unit (ARU) is a device that provides synthesized voice responses to touch-tone key presses (DTMF) by processing calls based on (a) the call-originator input, (b) information received from a database, and (c) information in the incoming call, such as the time of day. ARUs increase the number of information calls handled and to provide consistent quality in information retrieval.
1.4 RECENT TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIELD It has become more common in industries that have recently entered the telecom industry to refer to an Automated Attendant as an IVR. This means that when discussing an IVR application, it is important to ensure that the person you are talking to understand the term to mean the same thing as you do. Generally-speaking, those with a traditional telecom background are more likely to refer to an Automated Attendant and IVR as separate things, whereas those from an Emerging Telephony or VoIP background are more likely to use the term IVR to define any kind of telephony menu, even the most basic Automated Attendant. First IVR System / 1991 ITD successfully implemented the first interactive voice response systems in Turkey at Pamukbank*, Yapý Kredi Bank and Akbank. First Digital IVR / 1992 ITD made the implementation of the first biggest digital IVR system in Turkey. First National Switch Center (BKM) / 1993 ITD has important contributions at the formation of the first and only transaction switching system project of Turkey. The system is implemented jointly by BKM, Deluxe Data International and ITD. This EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) switch provides ATM & POS sharing capabilities among member banks and serves as a critical link between First Introduction of CTI Concept / 1994 ITD introduced the first Computer Telephony Integration at Biliþim '94. ITD became the distributor of Genesys's Computer First Speaker Independent Voice Recognition / 1995 ITD realized the first speaker independent
First Internet Integrated Call Center / 1998 ITD began to work on the first internet integrated call center project at Garanti Bank and successfully made the implementation in February '99. First Speech Recognition System / 2000 ITD launched Turkey’s First Speech-Enabled Call Automation System in July 2001 with Global Menkul Deðerler. Callers dial the main number, respond to various voice prompts using the Turkish language, and tell the system the company name
Chapter 2. DETAILS OF TOPIC AND ANALYSIS
2.1 PRINCIPLE OF IVRS Interactive voice response refers to technology supporting the interaction of customer with the service provider generally over the telephone lines. When a person wants to access any of the services of the Interactive Voice Response System, he presses a number through his telephone keypad. The pressed number appears across the line and the ring detector circuit senses this ring. After a specified number of rings the relay is activated through the microcontroller, which in turn connects the line to DTMF decoder. The activation of relay causes the number pressed to appear across the DTMF decoder. The decoder decodes the number pressed and then the decoder output is passed through the microcontroller to the computer. Now, when the caller presses a number, the number pressed is decoded by the DTMF decoder and passed to the computer through the microcontroller using MAX232. The computer recognizes the number and accesses the particular file from the database to output the voice message. The output voice is passed through the voice card where the digitized serial data is converted into analog voice form and passed to the line. The caller gets the information through the line. 2.2 SEQUENCE FOLLOWED IN THE IVRS SERVICE • • Caller dials the IVRS service number. The computer waits for a specified number of ringing tones at the end of which, the connection is established. • The connection is established by lifting the handset of telephone base from ONHOOK condition.
•
Now, a pre-recorded voice greets the caller conforming that the number dialed corresponding to the particular service.
•
Next, the menu is presented to the caller again in the voice form, giving him the various options to choose from.
•
If the information to be relayed back is confidential, then the system may even ask the dialer, to feed in a password number.
• • •
The database is accordingly referenced and the necessary information is obtained. Next, the same information is put across to the user in voice. The caller generally given the option to : a. Repeat whatever information was voiced to him. b. Repeat the choices. c. Break the call by restarting ON-HOOK condition
2.3 GENERAL DESCRIPTION ABOUT TELEPHONY Any telephone set will always be in any of the conditions mentioned below: 2.3.1 ON-HOOK It is the state whenever telephone handset is placed on the cradle. During this state, the telephone line is open circuit with the exchange and the voltage of –48 V is available on each telephone line from the exchange. 2.3.2 OFF-HOOK This is the state whenever telephone handset is displaced from the cradle. During this state the voltage level is between ± 5V to ± 12 V. The telephone OFF – HOOK resistance is typically 600 Ω . 2.3.3 SIGNALING TONES • Dial tone:
This tone indicates that the exchange is ready to accept dialed digits from the subscriber. The subscriber should start dialing only after hearing the dial tone. Otherwise, initial
dialed pulse may be missed by the exchange that may result in the call landing on the wrong number. The dialed tone is 33 Hz or 50 Hz or 400 Hz continuous tones. • Ring tone:
When the called party is obtained, the exchange sense out the ringing current to the telephone set of the called party. This ringing current has the familiar double ring pattern. Simultaneously, the exchange sends out the ringing tone to the calling subscriber, which has the pattern similar to that of ringing current, the two rings in the double ring pattern are separated by a time gap of 0.2s and two double rings patterns by a time gap of 2s.The burst has duration of 0.4s. The frequency of the ringing tone is 133 Hz or 400 Hz. • Busy tone:
Busy tone is bursty 400 Hz signal with silence period in between. The burst and silence duration has the same value of 0.75s. A busy tone is sent out to the calling subscriber whenever the switching equipment or junction line is not available to put through the call or called subscriber line is engaged. • Number unobtainable tone:
The number unobtainable tone is a continuous 400 Hz signal. This tone may be sent to the calling subscriber due to a variety of reasons. In some exchanges this tone is 400 Hz intermittent with 2.5s ON period and 0.5s OFF period. • Routing tone:
The routing tone or call – in – progress tone is 400 Hz or 800 Hz intermittent patterns. In an electromechanical system it is usually 800Hz with 50% duty ratio and 0.5s ON-OFF period. In analog electronic exchange it is 400 Hz pattern with 0.5s ON period and 0.5s OFF period. In digital exchange it has 0.1s ON-OFF period at 400 Hz • TOUCH –TONE KEY PAD
Touching a button generates a ‘ tone’, which is a combination of two frequencies, one from lower band and other from upper band. For e.g. pressing push button ‘7’ transmits 852 and 1209 Hz.
1209Hz 1336Hz 1477Hz 697Hz 770Hz 852Hz 941Hz 7 * 8 0 9 # 1 4 2 5 3 6
Fig 2.1 Typical 4 x 3 touch keypad In the keypad ten keys of decimal digits are used to call required number. The touch-tone telephone produces decade or DTMF signals for DTMF type. The keypad produces twotone sinusoidal outputs. Rows and columns determine the frequency. This keypad is working with different frequencies but only two frequencies are transmitted at a time. So the signal coming from this type of telephone is called Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF). 2.4 TELEPHONE INTERFACE SECTION It consists of following subsections: 2.4.1 Ring Detector Section Ring detector circuit does the function of detecting the ring activating signals and then counts the number of rings. 2.4.2 Ring activating signals This is send by telephone exchange to the subscriber. This signal causes an audio tone in the subscriber’s telephone set. This ring tone is an alarming signal, which diverts the attention of the subscriber towards the instrument. The ring signal produced at the central office is composed of a 10v ac, 400Hz signal that is always present on the telephone line with the handset in ON-HOOK position. The ring-activating signal is |ON for 0.2 sec and the subscriber can hear the sound of ring in that duration of time. For next 0.4 sec the ring-activating signal goes OFF. Now the subscriber can’t hear the sound. Again this repeats for six times with the pause of 2 sec. Thus the subscriber hears six rings.
2.4.3 Optocoupler In the same application it is necessary to isolate input and output. The isolation can be achieved in many ways. One of these is to use an Opto-coupler. Opto-coupler is controlled by optical energy. 2.4.4 Construction: Optocoupler is MCT 2E. The device consists of GaAs infra red emitting diode optically coupled to a monolithic silicon phototransistor detector. 2.5 DESIGN FLOW OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
Fig. 2.5.1 Design Flow of software Design Flow of Hardware
Chapter 3. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF IVRS
Fig. 3.1 Block Diagram of IVR System 3.1 BLOCK DIAGRAM EXPLANATION The main blocks of my system are as follows: • Ring Decoder • DTMF Decoder • MICROCONTROLLER • MAX 232 • Relay • Isolation Transformer • Voice Card
3.1.1 Ring Decoder Ring decoder consists of: • Bridge Rectifier • Capacitor Filter • Opto Isolator 3.1.2 DTMF Decoder In DTMF signaling, two frequencies are allocated to each digit in the push button keypad. The main function of the DTMF decoder is to detect the two frequencies and until and unless these two frequencies allocated for a particular digit are obtained, that particular digit will not be recognized by the DTMF decoder. The decoder uses digital counting technique to detect and decode all 16 DTMF tone pairs into 4 bit code. Its features are:• Complete DTMF Receiver • Low power consumption • Internal gain setting amplifier • Adjustable guard time • Central office quality • Power-down mode 3.1.3 Microcontroller • It is the central controller of the whole project. • It scans all channels continuously. • It transfers the logical values serially to the PC. • Various tasks are assigned to peripherals.
3.1.4 Relay Relay is used as a switch to provide the connection between the telephone line and the voice card as well as the DTMF decoder. 3.1.5 MAX 232 • • Convert the voltage levels. Dual driver/receiver that includes capacitive voltage generator to supply 232 voltage levels from single 5V supply. • • Each receiver converts 232 inputs to 5V TTL/CMOS levels. Each driver converts TTL/CMOS input levels into 232 levels.
3.1.6 Isolation Transformer The simplest and the most common way to do the isolation is by using audio transformer which is a 1:1 isolation transformer. 3.1.7 Voice Card It is the output device of the project. The caller will get to hear the information through the voice card.
Chapter 4. SYSTEM DESIGN
4.1 SELECTION OF DTMF DECODER This is the most important task for my project. As the number pressed by the caller is needed to be decoded before sending it to the microcontroller, a DTMF decoder is needed. For our project, we have used DTMF decoder IC8870.Its features are :• • • • • Complete DTMF Receiver Low power consumption Internal gain setting amplifier Adjustable guard time Central office quality o Power-down mode 4.2 SELECTION OF MICROCONTROLLER To achieve this task we first analyzed my needs. Those were.. • • To achieve fast operation To achieve great sensitivity
So for these we decided to select microcontroller 89C52. As it is having sufficient amount of RAM for such simple operations of reading. It supports high speed operation and has greater sensitivity when put into scanning mode of its inputs. 4.3 SELECTION OF RELAY Relays available are HK, PLA, OEN and GOODSKY. These are the different manufacturers of relays. Also, according to the DC voltages, relays available are 5V, 6V, 12V, 18V AND 24V. According to the type, relays available are SPST, DPDT and SPDT.Also, relays can be PCB mountable and Panel mountable. According to the
need of my project, I have used a 12V, DPDT, PCB mountable relay manufactured by GOODSKY. 4.4 SELECTION OF MAX 232 Actually MAX 232 is used because we wanted to have serial communication between microcontroller and computer. This supports short distance serial communication. we are using MAX 232 in IC format due to ready made availability of this. Some capacitors have to arrange along peripherals pins of this IC which we have connected in our actual circuit. Need of these capacitors is due to fact that MAX 232 datasheet shows need of such capacitors in order to pull data from one point to another point. 4.5 SELECTION OF COMPUTER Basically, we are going to implement a Visual Basic Code and a hardware depending on these VB commands. So while selecting a computer, we considered some points like whether Microsoft’s Visual Basic 6.0 is installed on this machine or not, then machine’s RAM and Hard disk space necessary to support VB environment, then secondary factors like color screen for exciting GUI and attractive model. Also, as our project needed a voice card as the output device, a personal computer with a voice card was chosen.
Chapter 5. WORKING OF THE PROJECT
• • When the telephone is in the idle condition, the voltage will be -48V. When the ringing occurs, it will be 125V peak to peak AC signal superimposed on 48V. • The opto isolator is used to isolate the microcontroller from high voltage AC signals and it consists of GaAs infrared emitting diode optically coupled to a monolithic silicon phototransistor. • The microcontroller will detect the ring through the port 1.5 and it will count the number of rings. • After a fixed number of rings, the microcontroller will send a signal to the relay and then the automatic off-hooking of the telephone takes place.At the same time, microcontroller will transmit ‘#’ to the computer which is an indication to play the ‘Welcome’ message. • The relay used is DPDT type and after automatic off-hooking takes place, the relay connects the telephone lines to the decoder IC 8870 and isolation transformer. • The transformer used is a line transformer used to isolate voice card from high voltages. • As the telephone lines are connected to the voice card, the caller gets to hear the stored messages and asks the caller to enter the roll number of the student whose result is to be known. After the caller dials the roll number from the touch tone keypad of his telephone, that number will be decoded by the decoder IC 8870 and the decoded information will be sent to the computer via the microcontroller. • Computer on receiving the decoded information will check the database to access the result of the student whose roll number is entered. • Then the computer will send the desired information to the voice card and the caller will get to hear the result of the student on his telephone through the voice card.
Chapter 6. SOFTWARE TO BE USED:
• • Visual Basic 6.0 MS –Access 2003
6.1 ADVANTAGES OF USING VISUAL BASIC 6.0 • Office/VSTO development.
The Office object model was created with optional parameters, a feature of VBA, in mind and makes heavy use of it. As Visual Basic supports this it has an advantage over C# • COM inter-op with older applications.
And in this case I am specifically referring to COM interop without a complete type library, something common in VB6 or Visual FoxPro. This is where Option Explicit Off is a great helper and time saver. 6.2 ADVANTAGES USING MS-ACCESS 2003 Although there is always overlap, the following rules might help when deciding when or when not to use MS Access: • • MS Access is best used for long-term data storage and/or data sharing. MS Excel is best used for minor data collection, manipulation, and especially visualization. • • • • SPSS is best used for minor data collection and especially data analysis. It is easy to export data from MS Access to Excel SPSS
Cheap, readily available (packaged with MS-Office Premium). Easy to use (relative to other systems –Oracle may require one FTE to maintain the server as a database administrator and another FTE to serve as an application developer).
Chapter 7. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING IVR SYSTEMS
7.1 ADVANTAGES The biggest advantage of IVR for small and large organizations is to save time and money. Answering phone calls takes a lot of time, and not every phone call deserves the attention of a trained employee. IVR systems can take care of most of the frequently asked questions that an organization receives (office hours, directions, phone directory, common tech support questions, et cetera) and allow customer service reps, salesmen and tech support specialists to concentrate on the harder stuff. If a large company is able to shave even a second off the average length of each phone call with a live operator, it can save them hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year [source: Human Factors International]. IVR systems have the advantage of making callers and customers feel like they're being attended to, even if it's just by a machine. If you have a simple question, it's better to get a quick answer from a computerized operator than to wait ten minutes on hold before talking to a human being. Another advantage is that IVR systems don't sleep. They don't take lunch breaks. They don't go on vacations to the Bahamas. An IVR system can be available 24 hours a day to field questions and help customers with simple tasks. An IVR system can make a small company look bigger. Some IVR hosting plans even set you up with an 800 number to look more official. Subscription IVR hosting plans make it easier for businesses and organizations to use these automated phone services. This is a big advantage of days past, when only large companies with big telecommunications and computing budgets could afford the hardware, software and staff to run in-house IVR systems. 7.2 DISADVANTAGES The greatest disadvantage of IVR systems is that many people simply dislike talking to machines. Older adults may have a hard time following telephone menus and lengthy instructions. And younger callers get frustrated with the slowness of multiple phone menus
Chapter 8. APPLICATIONS
8.1 BANKING & FINANCE Technological innovations have brought about not just new types of electronic money, but also new bank-customer relationships. These relationships are fuelling the demand for more and more innovative banking services such as: • • • • • • • • • Call Center with Customer Relationship Management Software Credit Card Activation System Credit Card Authorization Forex Enquiry by Speech Recognition Stock Quote By Speech Recognition Telephone Banking System Telephone Loan Approval Trade & Account Inquiry Service Voice Recording System
8.2 EDUCATION Apart from providing an environment for learning, educational establishments are now improving their quality of service, offering a better level of support to both students and to the public through: • • • • Enquiry Hotline Library Book Renewal Student Registration System Student Result Declaration System
8.3 GOVERNMENT In order to improve the efficiency of information accessibility, many government departments such as the Labour Department, the Education Department, the Immigration Department, the Inland Revenue and the Department of Health, have already implemented IVRS systems to provide hotline services. 8.4 TELECOMMUNICATIONS In this highly competitive industry, we can help telecom service providers (wire line or wireless) to develop infrastructure and add value to their services through: • • Prepaid Roaming Postpaid Calling Card, Prepaid Calling Card, and Wireless Prepaid (or Mobile Prepaid) • • • • • Mobile Number Portability Number Change Announcement Fax Stored-And-Forward Service Signaling Protocol Converters Telecom Call Center
Chapter 9. FUTURE ASPECTS
In future, the concept of Interactive Voice Response System can be used in various transport departments like Bus transport, Metro rail, Railways and Airports as the transport companies not only need to be fast and responsive, but also need to provide customers with an easily accessible information system providing: • • • • Information Enquiry Schedule Enquiry SISR Information Enquiry Teleticketing System
So, in near future, all the information regarding routes, timings etc. will be known through the Interactive Voice Response System.Also, this concept may be implemented in Cinema halls and Multiplexes where the caller will get to know the timings of his favourite movies as well as he can book his tickets through this system.
CONCLUSION
The system designed will be intelligent for interaction and will suitably provide a good response to the caller who will access it. It will be truly a responsible system for human mankind. We will make it better than the present scenario system. It will be digitally accessed and will have a strong data base and can be operated easily and of low cost. And the future will show that every organization will be using our system.
REFERENCES Websites:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_voice_response 2. http://web.cmc.net.in/products/ivrs/ivrs.asp 3. http://www.blissit.org/ivrs.htm 4. http://www.kleward.com/ivr_solutions.htm 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=information+on+IVR+system 6. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRG4C0RRMJ4&_user=7427940&_coverDate=08%2F05%2F2004&_alid=810799566&_rdoc= 6&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6234&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=7&_acct= C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=7427940&md5=58db2884bc bc7ed43d9119ed01eefe1a
Books: 1. Thiagarajan Vishwanathan/Telecommunication Switching System &
Networks/India PRI Pvt.ltd/Second Edition 2. Kenneth J.Ayala/The 8051 Microcontroller Applications/India/PRI Pvt.ltd/Second Edition 3. Douglas V.Hall/Microcontroller and Interfacing/New York/TMH Publishing Company Pvt Ltd/Second Edition Architecture ,Programming and
