Protection 1

Protection 1 endorses LumenVox speech recognition for Two-Way Voice IVR security system

Protection 1, the largest full service security provider in the U.S., provides installation, maintenance, and monitoring of single-family home security systems, business security systems and multifamily security systems. The company serves more than 1 million customers, employs over 2,900 people in more than 70 locations across the country, and has a 95.6% customer satisfaction rating and an A+ Better Business Bureau Rating.

In the course of installing security systems, Protection 1 faces a challenge: technicians need to verify the voice quality of telephone connections between the customer site and Protection 1's service center. This involves making a call from the customer location and going through a series of voice tests.

While the tests have proven crucial in maintaining service quality, they are relatively labor intensive and the cost to staff a call center became prohibitive — Protection 1's call center operations estimated that 30 new agents need to be hired and trained for this task every year.

To help resolve this issue, Protection 1 contracted with NACR, the world's leading independent integrator of communications solutions and services. Leveraging the IVR capabilities of Avaya's Aura^® Experience Portal, NACR and Protection 1 built a two-way voice IVR that allows technicians to perform these tests in an automated fashion.

Instead of dialing a call center and talking to agents, field technicians call into the IVR. Using the LumenVox Automated Speech Recognizer (ASR), the technicians are able to speak to the IVR and verify that it is able to understand them, proving the quality of transmission between the customer site and the Protection 1 service center. Likewise, the system can play back pre-recorded prompts and audio files, proving that the connection is good in both directions.

Out of the box, the application automated 75% of test calls, significantly reducing the demand placed on Protection 1's call center. Compared to a similar application developed earlier using different speech technology, the two-way Voice IVR provides comparable, if not better performance.

However, there is a significant new hurdle that the current two-way voice IVR faces which was not part of the prior application: technicians in the earlier application used telephone handsets to make the call, which optimized the quality of the voice that was captured.

The current application, powered by the LumenVox ASR, captures voice through far field microphones and plays back audio through speakers that are part of the security panels installed in the customer's site. This is a much more challenging acoustic environment, making the performance by the LumenVox ASR an impressive technical achievement.

Protection 1 and NACR found that the LumenVox ASR was very easy to install, configure, and integrate with Avaya Aura^® Experience Portal. Documentation in the LumenVox Knowledge Base offered step-by-step instructions and screenshots. The LumenVox Support team provided precise and timely answers whenever a question was raised, and provided outreach by reminding the Protection 1 project team regarding data collection tasks — something other vendors rarely do.

"LumenVox provides a first rate product and great support," says David Utt, Sr. Telecom Manager for Protection 1. "We made the right choice in working with them."