TARGUS Ties IVR And Data Aggregation.

For the past eight years, TARGUS Information Corp. (TARGUSinfo) has actively engaged in the development of real-time intelligence solutions that help businesses to more productively process both customer and prospect transactions. Through the TARGUSinfo Intelligence Portal data service, companies access information useful for transaction-based applications and services. Through one interface, the user has access to many pieces of information that may be useful for identifying, routing, profiling, locating or billing a customer transaction. The portal simplifies access to this information by eliminating protocol conversions, formatting issues, network concerns and many complications of blending data. It links virtually every household and business telephone number in the U.S. and Canada with a variety of information; e.g., names, postal addresses, predictive consumer purchase scores, and both risk management and store locator information.

TARGUS has also launched SpeechCapture Express, a product that automates name and address capture with high accuracy -- and with a twist. Merging speech recognition and speech capture technology with its Real Time Intelligence system, SpeechCapture Express is designed to integrate into a company's existing interactive voice response (IVR) system. In handles both the connection to the TARGUS Intelligence Portal and interactions with the name and address grammars available through the client's speech recognition unit. Name grammars are built from a knowledge base of speech patterns, accents, phonetic representations and occurrences. According to the company, they deliver a potential match rate of over 90 percent of all callers. Address grammars provide coverage of all U.S. mailing addresses and consist of separate grammars for ZIP codes, street names and numbers, pre- and post-delivery directions, building names and apartment numbers. The technology behind the product is based primarily on dialog application c omponents (DACs). DACs are dialog subroutines used for specific purposes -- in this case, capturing a caller's full name and/or address. DACs are essentially software components residing on the client's IVR system. They interface with the IVR application and handle all integration with the Intelligence Portal, allowing application developers to take advantage of the real-time data without implementing new protocols. DACs also communicate directly with the client's speech recognition environment, where the grammars reside. SpeechCapture Express eliminates "blind" calls, reduces in-queue and abandoned calls, automates address verification for mail delivery and integrates seamlessly with other automated contact center applications.