dominic cameron

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• dominic cameron
• chief technology officer - lastminute.com
• not only, but also...
• project director - voice channels
• to share with you a Christmas Story
• to talk around a few things learned in our first
  dip
• to stimulate discussion about things I worry
  about...

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• Why
• When
• What
• How
• Who
• Learning from building
• Learning from running
• Future challenges

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why we built it ?

• its a major new channel - thats obvious now
• any phone, any place, any granny
• in mid-2000 the industry seemed to come-of-age
• especially relevant to mobile, but also iDTV
• lastminute.com model great for the VoiceWeb

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why we built it ?

• need to build skills and learn processes
• need to learn by doing, especially for
  prioritisation
• better partnerships with mobile players
• generates excitement inside and outside company

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why a Christmas gifts service ?

• we had already committed to a printed catalogue
• aim was to reach a new audience offline
• distribution in newspapers and street handouts
• opportunity to explore IVR and voice-reco

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why a Christmas gifts service ?

• so, a well-suited trial project
• limited product vocabulary (50 products)
• full control over product names
• project forced us to deal with all the issues
• we would need to create all the key building
  blocks

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what did the customer hear ?

• 100 voice automated shopping service
• Welcome ! please say the name of the product you
  want to buy.
• 50 products, and descriptions with special audio
  FX
• A complete shopping experience

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what did the customer hear ?

• speech-shopping basket
• credit card and debit card interface
• category and product browsing interface
• full postal addressing module
• personal greeting message to attach to gift
• context-sensitive help, terms and conditions etc
• confirmation by SMS, invoice by email and post

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what we built

• Nortel/Periphonics platform linked to Lucent
  switch
• Nuance ASR
• LH TTS
• Postcode reco module from BT Labs (Syncordia)
• Web-based transcription interface using PeriWeb
• XML interfaces to back-end processes
• ASP/SQL platform for breakout, inventory admin,
  fraud control, credit card charging,email and SMS
• N.I.C.E. automated call recording and ACD link

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who built it

• 12 weeks from green-light to go-live
• a team of 40 people involved at different times
• 2 full-time lastminute.com staff, 15 ad hoc
• turnkey Nortel (1 project manager, 2 developers)
• BT Syncordia developers (VXML PeriPro port)
• ASP/MS-SQL developers
• CCIR for WoZ and SUI review and refinement
• Matinee Productions for studio, special effect
• James Giangola from Nuance

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what we learned while building it

• it is not like building websites
• multi-disciplinary staffing was critical
• with a great team the core tasks are done fine
• the problems appear at the junctions
• test, test, test - and not just on your
  colleagues...
• documentation is a very tough issue
• its even more critical than in large web
  projects
• We have 4 different documentation strategies in
  this room
• Creative teams wont work with hardcore technical
  documentation
• Engaging systems will not be designed and live
  without creatives
• do the WoZ beforehand and not during... if poss !

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what we learned from running it

• it works
• its a highly engaging channel
• phone numbers and credit cards are a done deal
• postcode handling is production ready
• you get very, very close to the customer
• track, record and listen in
• customers put up with many steps if well designed
• higher conversion, more items per basket
• many ways of applying ASR/IVR in our business

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future challenges (1)

• personalisation - silver bullet ?
• my account - obstacle or driver ?
• VXML - ready for advanced, mission critical
  systems?
• when will a VXML ASP industry emerge in Europe ?
• tools are far from ready for rapid, iterative dev
• must integrate logic, objects, vocabulary, wav,
  grammars
• using natural language with low call frequency
• regulatory issues in transactional voice systems

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future challenges (2)

• name detection surnames are my holy grail...
• I dont know my ABC !
• standardisation of vocabularies ?
• Who will offer outsourced maintenance of names
  pronunciation?
• Place names, peoples names, company names,
  product names
• melting-pot vocabularies

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future challenges (3)

• on the VoiceWeb it is 1984 remember Prestel ?
• we want callers that means inter-voicesite
  traffic
• HTML wasnt important because it recognised
  mouse-clicks
• the VoiceWeb will only come when theres a voice
  network
• VXML needs evolution and extensions (SpeechLinks
  ?)
• interconnected voice-sites (VoIP architectures)
• multi-part calls and layered call-flows

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thank you !

• Dominic Cameron
• dominicc_at_lastminute.com