As Voice-XML gains traction over the next four years, China will become the largest market for Voice-XML platforms in all of the Asia-Pacific region.
 
IVR enables callers to conduct phone-based transactions or get routed to the right department or agent through touchtone or speech input. The technology helps companies to reduce overhead costs, improve customer service and even increase revenue generation through up-sell and cross-sell campaigns.

The next generation IVR platform technology is based on Voice-XML, an industry open standard. Voice-XML aims to bring the power of the Web to telephony applications. Developers can build and extend IVR applications, leveraging the same Web infrastructure assets, significantly reducing the cost of construction and delivery of new capabilities for the traditional phone customer.
 
In a speech on August 22, at G-Force China 2006, Beijing, Daniel Hong, senior voice business analyst with Datamonitor, will provide an overview of China's IVR market, highlight key emerging trends and shed light on the advantages and disadvantages of Voice-XML and proprietary IVR systems in contact centre environments. (http://www.esoon.com/gforce2006/)
 
According to Datamonitor, over 80% of IVR implementations in China today are traditional touchtone IVR systems based on proprietary languages. Maintenance, upgrades and data integration can therefore be expensive and complex, causing vendor lock-in and placing companies in technology silos. Some companies have developed and deployed their own proprietary IVR systems in-house, but many of these companies face problems when it comes to scalability and flexibility.
 
The limitations of traditional IVR systems are finally being exploited in the North American and European markets and this is making inroads into China. Therefore, a growing number of Chinese businesses are investing in Voice-XML platforms not only prevent vendor lock-in but also to provide more sophisticated levels of caller interaction such as self-service, enhanced routing and speech recognition.

Many are also turning to Voice-XML to better leverage their existing web and application assets as they look to deploy an IP infrastructure. Key local vendors, such as eSoon, are providing Voice-XML platforms in China. By 2010, China will account for almost 40% of Voice-XML shipments in APAC.