Retail Customers Ask For What They Want - Parus Interactive Unveils Natural Language Retail Interactive Voice Response System
NEW YORK--Jan. 17, 2005--The days when customers of chain retailers had to wait for long periods of time on hold to ask for directions or to discover the price and availability of products they desire are about to become a thing of the past and as easy as saying hello in 2005.
Retailers will also be able to say good-bye to having to field those repetitive calls from customers too as Parus Interactive (Booth #477) debuts their four next-generation speech-enabled Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications at the National Retail Federation Convention and Expo, January 16-19 in New York City at the Jacob Javitz Convention Center.
The four applications, developed specifically for multi-location retail operators by Parus Interactive, include a Store Locator; both a chain wide and an advanced individual store level Product Pricing and Availability search engines along with an Order and Delivery Status notification module which answers the customer`s questions quickly and efficiently.
All of this has been made possible by Parus` patented speech-powered solution which now makes obtaining the desired information as simple as using the human voice and a telephone which enables customers to be able to receive the answers they need without any button pushing or delay.
-- The Store Locator -- will identify the nearest store, based on the caller`s location. A key point of differentiation is that the Parus Interactive platform enables users to speak a city and state, OR a zip code compared to the current applications which only allow users to find store locations based on ZIP codes alone.
-- Product Pricing and Availability (PPA) -- provides callers with the ability to determine what products a retailer sells, the pricing of products, and the availability of products in stock. Product feature descriptions are also available to the caller.
-- An enhanced Advanced Product Pricing and Availability (PPA) -- means a customer can enter the system in search of a nearby store location and then determine the pricing and availability of products at a particular store. Alternatively, the caller can also inquire about product pricing and availability and then retrieve a list of all store locations where a particular product is currently in stock.
-- Order/Delivery Status -- enables a caller to check the status of a previously placed product/delivery order by invoice or order number. The caller can change order status, to have the product delivered at different time/location, or cancel delivery and choose to pickup the product in person.
In addition to hearing the information from any of the four applications immediately, the caller can choose to have all retrievable information sent to him/her as an e-mail or fax. The caller can also choose to automatically dial through to any store he/she designates.
About Parus Interactive
Parus Interactive is a leading provider of hosted, speech-enabled interactive voice response solutions. The company is dedicated to meeting the needs of clients within the U.S. retail industry. Its products enable multi-location retailers of all sizes to quickly deploy solutions that add value by enhancing the experiences that their customers have when communicating with them by telephone.
Unlike traditional hardware-based IVR systems, the Parus Interactive solution allows clients to replace capital expenditures and maintenance costs with more manageable and predictable operating expenses. This approach provides clients with a more immediate return on their investment.
With nearly 180 million minutes of business-related telephone calls passing across its telecommunications platform each year, Parus Interactive is also the nation`s largest hosted unified communications provider. Parus Interactive`s services are IP-based and powered by advanced natural language voice recognition and session initiation protocol (SIP) technologies.
Based in suburban Chicago, Parus Interactive is privately held and supported financially by highly respected venture capital firms. The company has been profitable since 2001.
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