First contact - Commercial overview

The “First Contact” suite of applications from Lattice Voice enables client organisation staff and customers to communicate, each in their own language, via scripted dialogues that embody the client’s best business practices. It enables organisations to address any customer, anywhere, anytime. It applies equally to telephone callers and visitors to client offices, using technology that already exists in these contexts. “First Contact” is one of the world’s first highly convergent applications, tightly integrating established and leading-edge technologies from fixed & mobile telephony, computing and the Internet.

Our goal is to make available to client organisations, pragmatic and innovative solutions for multilingual applications, while continually engaging in the latest techniques and technologies that progress inevitably, over time, to real-time multilingual speech recognition and translation. “First Contact” applications are entirely ambivalent to the languages that are used by the client staff and their customers. In particular, the system accords no unique significance to the English language – it has exactly the same rank as any other language. For example, “First Contact” applications operate precisely the same way in enabling communications between an English-speaking London hotel manager and a Portuguese tourist, as they do with a Mandarin-speaking Beijing Police officer and a German businessman.

“First Contact” enables bilingual communications between client organisation staff and customers, in all the contexts in which these communications need to occur – on the phone, in the office and on the street.

“On the Phone” is appropriate for customers calling an organisation’s call centre or help line. In this case, the Lattice Voice Server identifies the caller’s language, ascertains the reason for calling and then translates the appropriate scripted dialogue between the caller and the call taker. The caller uses any telephone handset, the call taker uses the web page at his workstation, each communicating in their own first language.

“In the Office” is used where customers are visiting a physical location with a front desk, such as a Police station, Hospital A&E department, Utility company showroom or the front desk of a Hotel or Bank. In these cases, the customer and the organisation’s staff each use one of a pair of touch screens, so that they can communicate with each other across a desk or counter. The Lattice Voice Server translates between the two screens, so that each person communicates with the other in their own language.

“On the Street” allows the organisation’s staff and customers to communicate via a handheld device such as a mobile telephone. This solution is deployed with mobile staff such as Police officers on the beat and Utility company engineers. In these cases, the bilingual dialogue with the customer can be accessed via text and voice on the mobile device.

Having ascertained the language of the caller or visitor, the applications then use scripted dialogues – with automatic procedures and with manual intervention – so that client staff can maintain dynamic control over the dialogue, relevant to each customer’s particular context. This means that callers and visitors who do not speak the same language as the client’s staff can receive a response to their query which is not only immediate, but also which is very cost-effective and which follows the client company’s codes of best practice.

In addition to the subsequent improvements in customer satisfaction, market penetration and cost structure, client organisations also gain the benefits of addressing the legislative and social issues related to equality and human rights. Many senior corporate executives are already beginning to view these issues in terms of competitive business benefits as well as from a legal viewpoint, and are stating so publicly in their strategies for Corporate Social Responsibility.

“First Contact” has been designed and built using all the relevant standards applicable to telephony, computing and the Internet. The applications need no proprietary equipment. All the functionality is available using the existing hardware and software that a client company would normally be using already, such as telephones, mobiles, PDAs, servers, personal computers and web browsers. Also, all the applications have been designed from the outset to satisfy all the large enterprise needs for robustness, reliability and resilience.

The “First Contact” applications have been developed in UNIX and the C programming language, for resilience and portability, and also are fully compliant with all relevant standards. In relation to the web modules, the applications use HTTP for transport functionality, HTML for delivering the payload contents and XML & XSLT for data structuring and presentation, so that the system is scalable and easy to customise to the needs of each individual client. In relation to the telephony functionality, the applications use the SIP protocol for session initiation, and fully supports connectivity via VOIP, ISDN and Analogue devices.

“First Contact” can be deployed in “stand-alone” mode and “network” mode. “In the Office”, for example, can be deployed via a stand-alone PC connected to a pair of touch-screens. “On the Street” can be deployed with scripted dialogues embedded in the mobile device itself. Where functionality and content are served from a server on a network, the applications are designed to be lightweight, so that server processing and network communication is as efficient as possible.

Services

Lattice also provides a wide range of consulting, installation and training facilities to its clients. The company has created a project management regime, called “Harmonise”, based on 6–sigma and creative design principles, to help to design and build such multilingual applications for clients, as effectively and as efficiently as possible. It particularly integrates both systematic and creative principles, enabling diverse groups of people to collaborate on these projects, so that client solutions not only satisfy their requirements, but are also compelling for their customers.