Project information

StatusFinalist
URLGo to website
CategoryCulture
Tourism
CountryMexico
Operational areasUrban, Rural
Target groupsYouth, Women, Men, Seniors
Wireless connectiontelephone Line
Access pointsGovernment office, Business, Home, School, Library, Telecenter, Cafe, Payphone
InteractLandline Phone, Cellphone , Local Land Lines and Pay Phone Services
Software License TypesOpen Source, Proprietary

Project location

Random images Challenge 2008

Voice Portal Toll Free Phone Service 1-800-VERATUR

  • Brief description
  • Voice Portal 01 800 VERATUR Phone Service is a project developed by Government of Veracruz in Mexico.  VERTAUR Voice Portal is intended to deliver cultural and tourist information at a low cost using the wide phone network built in Mexico. VERATUR  uses the most proven linguistic techniques, and the latest voice dialog technology (speech-dialog recognition technology). Using the most advanced dialog procedures VERATUR code has been integrated with several computers and Telco equipments to establish a conversation with a live person. VERATUR’s main goal is trying to simulate in an almost imperceptible way a well trained and informed human operator.   People can call toll free number to talk with a virtual operator and request any tourist and cultural information (hotels, restaurants, airlines, tourist places, cultural sites, etc) from the state of Veracruz in Mexico.  With a simple call VERATUR will understand what the caller is asking for and give answer to as much information as it has been trained.  VERATUR code is capable of understanding any type of caller young, old, male or female. Every day VERATUR is learning from its own callers, learning the way they talk, their pronunciations, their requests, in order to achieve the best caller experience with an automated system.   The main idea behind VERATUR is that the virtual operator should answer 98% of the callers questions in less than 3 minutes of conversation.
  • Vision, Objectives and Goals
  • As a Central government of a State, Veracruz Governor decided to put leading edge technologies to narrow the communication gap between people from the Urban and Rural Areas and to use the latest advances in communication to build a bridge of electronic  services to the Mexican people.   In Mexico Internet has not yet reach a point of performance and usefulness. Based on Information provided by the COFETEL in 2007 poll, Mexico has only about  10 million computers  connected to the World Wide Web, while only half of them are  connected with a broad band services. Due to this fact was necessary to establish a different line of communication between the Users and the Government. That is when we realize that the largest Network available in Mexico is the one based on phone services with nearly 40 Million Local Land Lines and 40 Million Mobile Services. With this in mind, it was necessary to create a low cost phone service that will be capable of providing any kind of information that the users might need. Phase One: Decision MakingSeveral Options were evaluated to make the best decision possible. 1)First of all, establishing a live call center will require a big investment, but the main problem with a live call center was the training of the people. Trying to find a group of people that will be capable enough to give out all the information during 3 different shifts of personnel in order to cover a 24 hour service was a huge and complicated task. Monthly wages of supervisors and the live operators had a tremendous impact on the Return of Investment. Decision of why this option was aborted.2) The use of traditional IVR phone systems using  touch-tone (DTMF) services was quickly eliminated as we realize that large amount of information could become complicated to handle.  IVR with traditional ASR were avoided.  As IVR carriers will offer only a set of tools that will allow us to understand just a set of words and not complete phrases. We wanted something that will quickly adapt to our legacy systems and currently and future technologies. Furthermore IVR systems  with ASR are mainly develop for the English market, however understanding Spanish speaking phrases for the Mexican people as vocabularies and grammars where not yet there and needed to be developed. As government changes we didn’t want be tight up to a specific brand of IVR.  Last but not least IVRs are not design to handle a lot of information, complicating a lot the development task. All of this had a huge impact on the cost analysis and ROI of the project with IVRs. 3) With this in mind we decided to start developing our own solution that will offer a complete conversation of a  Mexican Spanish speaking virtual operator as we create an open technology that will not require any kind of specific brand of equipment from Telco Communications and capable of Run Once and Run Anywhere with Java Technologies.  With the use of dialog recognition Technologies computers can now establish a complete conversation with the people. The problem was to figure a way where people can speak whatever they want,  in whatever way they want to, and to achieve the highest recognition by our servers.  The process will require  a huge and intense training of the virtual operator  as we allow callers to speak naturally.  Our Initial goal was to achieve a high quality service, that will be capable of providing a 24 hours a day information service, with no special equipment required or training by the people. With the large amounts of information that our government has,  it was clear to us that we needed to select a set of information that could be simple to understand to the people and that will be useful to anybody in our country.That is how 1-800 VERATUR project was born as it was following the path of an Innovation in Government Communication, which includes providing a unique and accessible mass media to improve of services for the citizens when looking for useful information.  Before we started we needed to show the importance of such technology in the reduction of our internal costs, by reducing first level attention employee’s, expenses reduction for trips from central offices to the tourism offices, cost reduction while eliminating inefficient phone use by personnel of the Government. This practice is original because speech dialog recognition technology allows to maintain a conversation with a person and to understand what he needs.  Without this technology people can ask in different ways the same thing, to achieve the same answer. This new service is accessible for any person of any age and any gender without any required special skill or any special equipment. Making it ideal for under develop countries, where Internet infrastructure is not fully developed. Common conversations can be replicated and phrases can be understand and interpreted by dialog recognition technology, getting rid of conventional IVR phone systems that use touch tone keys and conventional live operators.
  • How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
  • The use of  phone network, the  implementation of speech dialog recognition, open source software as well as the help of well trained people in the areas of linguistic and dialog design help realize VERATUR.  VERATUR is mainly a virtual operator capable of understanding what the people say when speaking naturally over the phone.  Without the technology it would be complicated and expensive to improve the quality of the service, give more and better attention to our citizens, and a social benefit is realized as the flow of new tourist has increased in the past few years. Moreover,  VERATUR has helped reduced the overall costs, as it eliminates several internal direct and indirect costs link to the promotion of tourist and cultural places, reduce times, and personnel.  As a modern government we need to make sure to reach anybody in any place.   VERATUR is capable of achieving this as more services are created with the use of dialog technologies and more virtual operators are created with more useful information.   VERATUR has proven to be a new way of providing information as we transform that all of our information currently in our website is given to this new virtual operators. 
  • Transferability
  • Knowing how the people speak, creating the necessary linguistic and dialog paths as well as the vocabulary and grammars for the Mexican Spanish Language will allow to transfer this technology to thousand of different projects that will not only be beneficial to government related project but to any kind of organization that will need to deliver information to clients or customers.   For starters this project can be easily implemented in any city, state or government around Mexico.  All of them can use this technology to promote their tourist services and to even create a National Tourist Toll Free Phone Service if the appropriate agreements are made.
  • Project summary
  • Veratur is a complete technological project, since it uses a dialog technology that is not yet widely use around the world, since the development of the vocabulary and linguistics varies from region to region. Creating a Virtual Operator that is human enough to understand and respond accurately makes it a difficult task. With dialog recognition technolgies computers can maintain a conversation with a person, and understand what he wants, without the need of saying exact words. No training is needed by the caller. That is to say, the user can ask for same thing with other terms and still obtain the desirable answer. This is possible thanks to a linguistic process that recreates spoken phrases, according to the most common forms of the popular speech. Allowing us to reduce personnel and achieve saving costs of operation and maintenance. Veratur has accomplished the main objective of providing information at a low cost to anybody without the need of any special equipment using the widest available network in the world and with no training or special knowledge necessary.  All of this is needed in under develop countries where the Internet is not widely used and the cost and expenses of having it are really high. Now in 2007 Veratur provides information about  Hotels, restaurants, bars, taxis, airlines, busses, banks, hospitals, sites of entertainment, emergency services among many other touristic an cultural information, but it is our goal to extend the service to allow the citizen to be able to give out information about cost and requirements of thousands of services that the government has.