Calling All Clicks

One of the biggest shifts in marketing today and for the foreseeable future is the introduction of technologies that make it much easier and less expensive to talk to customers. VOIP is dramatically reducing the cost of local and long distance calling, while click-to-call technologies will integrate voice with web marketing.

This week Voxeo released a platform that marries VOIP, interactive voice response (IVR) and click-to-call. The Prophecy application automatically initiates a phone call from the merchant when customers click on a "talk live" button.

Voxeo includes both speech recognition and speech synthesis software, and is based on XML standards, including Voice XML and Call Control Extensible Markup Language (CCXML).

Click-to-call enables customers who want or need to talk to someone to complete a transaction to receive an instantaneous call, which greatly increases conversion rates.

Resident rumor-meister Jason tells me he's heard rumblings that one of the big three search engines is using Voxeo's technology for click to call.