Speech Design has successfully implemented Germany’s first Visual
Voice Mail service in cooperation with Vodafone. In addition, the
innovative "Call Completion Suite" also boosts the number of successful
connections by providing intelligent notifications of all failed call
attempts to both callers and the called parties.
Visual Voice Mail is rapidly gaining recognition as the future standard
for delivering voice messages to mobile users. Traditional voice mail
systems require the users to call a central number and retrieve voice
messages sequentially by pressing buttons in response to spoken
instructions. Visual Voice Mail totally eliminates this cumbersome
procedure by "pushing" the messages directly to the customer’s
mobile handset. The message list is presented in an "e-mail-like" inbox
with the callers´ names and numbers, for easy playback at the
user’s convenience.
Unlike more restricted proprietary approaches to Visual Voice Mail, the
Speech Design implementation utilises the standard MMS protocol for
message delivery, making it compatible with almost all current handset
models. "Innovation is crucial for Vodafone as a leading mobile
operator, and the Vodafone Visual Mailbox is a genuine revolution in
the German market. Dialling into the mailbox and sequential message
retrieval is a thing of the past – now subscribers receive their
voice messages conveniently via MMS for instant playback, storing,
forwarding, and other intuitive one-click options." Jan Martens, CEO,
Speech Design Carrier Systems, describes the service, which has already
received industry acclaim for its levels of innovation and usability:
"This service is unique in Germany and is a real improvement on
conventional voice and touch-controlled mailbox systems. The Visual
Mailbox from Vodafone shows current mailbox systems to be outdated and
cumbersome – a market advantage which will attract greater
customer loyalty." notes Current Analysis in its "Competitive
Intelligence Report Europe":
But not only voice mail users benefit from the new call completion
features. "Intelligent notification services greatly improve the
reachability of subscribers who don’t use a mailbox." explains
Jan Martens. "All the calls that would have been lost previously are
now detected, and both callers and the called parties are offered
easy-to-use options which quickly lead to a successful connection. In
addition to improved reachability for the customers, from the carrier
perspective the network efficiency and the overall call completion
rates are significantly increased. We are extremely pleased by Vodafone
Germany’s decision to select Speech Design as its partner for
this innovative, large-scale deployment. We believe Speech Design now
has the largest Call Completion base in Europe, installed at some of
the Continent’s biggest carriers".