Business Needs

• The client, an Australian based startup, backed by a world renowned impersonator, wanted to deliver customized greetings & reminders for various occasions through telephone with funny celebrity impersonation voices.
• The system need to include support for scheduled automated calls to recipients who would receive recorded messages based on the greeting ordered for them by their well wishers through the greetings web portal (online ordering).
• The system need to automate the order and delivery system that would allow users to place orders for the greetings and the system would automatically execute the same at the specified date & time and call the recipient and deliver the greetings
• The system need to include support for text to speech conversion where custom messages typed by users ordering the greeting would be read out (converted to speech) to the recipients at the end of the message during the delivery call.
• Finally, the system need to have a strong back-end for easy updating of the occasions and personalities list and respective voices along with a simple yet robust order management system

Key Challenges

• Integrating an automated call delivery system that would deliver scheduled outgoing recorded messages to the recipients’ phone number.
• Integrating a TTS (Text To Speech) engine to convert personalized messages into speech.

Technology Used

Asterix (PBX)

Asterix is a software implementation of a private telephone exchange. It has the features of any other PBX and also allows connection with other services including PSTN and VoIP. It is a relatively new and untapped technology that makes telephony services cheaper, faster and their availability more widespread. It is free and an open-source software that finds applications in PBX, Voice Mail, IVR, Conference calling and Automated Call Distribution.

It is available to everyone and is fairly easy to set up. It allows one to create personal communication channels. Adopting this technology is an economical and future-proof approach to the development of this project. With businesses all over the world adopting Asterix at ground-breaking pace, use of it in this project is justified and is an example of how we are always looking to employ the latest and the best technology available.

Our Solution

• For this particular business model, the look and feel of the web portal must was very light and refreshing. The user is provided with a simplistic site with options to register, select their occasion, personality, type of greeting and payment options. In four simple steps, the user completes their task of selecting the greeting, scheduling the greeting and paying for it. The web portal was developed using CakePHP, a matured, open source, MVC based PHP Rapid Application Development (RAD) framework, the best in the market.
• A simple back-end design that allows the admin to primarily monitor users, orders and transactions among other features.
• The site also allows professional or amateur impersonators also to register and submit audio samples if they wish to work with the Client.
• Adopting Asterix allowed us to easily and automatically dispatch recorded greeting messages requested by the users on schedule, requiring no user input via a VOIP call to the recipient. The custom designed “least cost routing” algorithm also chooses the VOIP route (provider) which offers the cheapest call rates to the call destination. If the recipient does not pick up the first try, the system automatically retries after sometime. All this simply means that the client was not required to constantly monitor the system and it was completely automatic.
• Cepstral TTS engine is used for converting the personalized messages entered by the user into speech format and was integrated into the Asterix software. The personalized message was automatically read out to the recipient during the final part of the call.

Front-end functionality

To support the user-friendly site design, the site incorporated easy to use features that any user could work with which include:

• Simple navigation features.
• Easy registration process with minimal details required.
• Extremely simple and clear ordering process.
• Various choices for the types of greeting, personalities (including sample audio) and occasions.
• Multiple payment methods : Pay per greeting and Pre-paid token packages
• Secure and encrypted transactions through PayPal.
• Order history, transaction summary and pending order details available in Accounts page.

Back-end functionality

A strong back-end provides the admin access to various details regarding users and orders and the media available on the site.

• Complete control over registered user accounts with option to activate/deactivate.
• Change available choices for the user including Occasions, Personalities and audio samples.
• Order history and token transaction history filtered by date/user.
• Change parameters such as prices, availability and commission.
• Sales report for all transactions also available in downloadable format.
• Impersonators registered with the site also have a portal through which they can access:
• Uploaded sample audio and add new samples.
• Commission history.
• Control panel for account details.

Conclusion

By engaging Kliotech, the Client managed to achieve an optimal solution for their innovative business model that provides a solid foundation and uses the best of its kind technology at cheaper prices than other alternatives.

The use of this technology showcases that we aim to deliver the best to out Client and also ensure it requires the least effort to operate. The web portal is a great way to reach out to potential customers and our design of a self-sustaining system has helped make the services offered easy to access and the Client has benefited tremendously in terms of business received through the system.