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| HanPhone¡GCase Study ¢w Social
Welfare Department (SWD) |
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HanPHONE
IVR Provides Social Workers Timely Information
Hotline To Serve People In Need
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Background
The Social Welfare Departmental (SWD) hotline
service launched since 1980 provides callers
the information on social services, to provide
immediate counseling and advice whenever necessary
and in crisis situation and to direct callers
to appropriate SWD offices. IVR technology
with voice mail function was introduced in
1995 to extend the hotline service to 24 hours
a day. Due to frequent updates on service
information, the old IVR system was found
to be increasingly costly to maintain up-to-date
information especially when Cantonese, Putonghua
and English are required for information delivery
over the phone. Similar problem happened to
SWD's homepage of which a new Homepage Content
Management System (HCMS) was developed and
launched in 2005 such that daily maintenance
of the information could be decentralized
to the 10 service branches and 12 district
social welfare offices.
With the successful launch of the departmental
HCMS system, SWD began to seek for a new
IVR system in 2006 with the primary objective
to synchronize the hotline service information
with that from the homepage in a most automated
and cost-effective way. And that, the service
branches and district offices would be capable
to modify the telephone call-flow and contents
by non-technical social workers. A tender
was issued subsequently inviting IVR technology
providers to bid for the project.
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Solution
The HanPHONE IVR succeeded in winning the
bid and the new hotline service at 2343 2255
was re-launched in 2007 offering 10 telephone
lines and 2 on-demand fax lines for public
service. The new IVR system features a web-based
Content Management System (WCMS), first of
its kind developed enabling multiple non-technical
users to maintain call-flows and to update
contents simultaneously with complete authoring
rights control system through a browser. Based
on call-flows as defined by the social workers,
callers will be able to listen to the latest
specific service information imported directly
from SWD's homepage. The WCMS is developed
using Microsoft IIS and ASP programming language.
Furthermore, text information imported
from the homepage is automatically converted
into Cantonese, Putonghua and English using
the latest human-sounding text-to-speech
(TTS) technology. The IVR system also keeps
a detail log for successful call-transfers
outside the duty hours of SWD's social workers
to other hotline services manned by non-government
agencies so as to facilitate accounting
of fund support.
HanPhone IVR is an award winning, innovative
web-based voice application platform for
the design and creation of Interactive Voice
Response (IVR) system. Its unique web-based
development environment makes creation and
maintenance of IVR system as easy as developing
a website and allows telephone users accessing
real-time information from the web. The
web-based management interface allows users
to control the IVR system easily anywhere
from an Internet connected PC.
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Benefits
HanPHONE IVR is the first computer-telephony
platform providing a web-based CMS system.
It allows decentralization of the call-flows
and content maintenance to multiple users
in the front line resulting to a most timely
information enquiry system to callers. Whenever
changes in service information happen in the
SWD homepage, telephone users are brought
up-to-date too.
As the call flows and content management
chores are all done in-house by social workers
and the TTS function replaces the laborious
voice recording work, the long term maintenance
cost is reduced considerably.
The new IVR system provides also controls
for the social workers to allocate manpower
effectively round-the-clock reducing possibility
of callers hitting time of no available
assistance during crisis.
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