Tellme surpasses milestone

(Telephony) Tellme Networks yesterday said enterprise customers have committed to purchase more than one billion minutes on its network. Separately, the company said it is expanding its service line with the introduction of an outbound call-notification service and a call-center application.

Targeting Fortune 500 companies, Tellme customers buy minutes on the network to run voice applications and services. The company’s outbound notification--called Tellme Notifier--lets businesses reach customers with an automated call notification to deliver information such as stock or auction alerts, shipping notification, flight delays or scheduled alerts such as wake-up calls and appointment reminders.

“Basically, we’re calling them and engaging them with a voiceXML application,” said Andy Scott, vice president of marketing for Tellme.

In one example, Jiffy Lube International, through its relationship with ShopTalk, will use Tellme Notifier to call customers with a pre-recorded message reminding them that it’s time to schedule an oil change. The objective is to not necessarily change behaviors on the phone but to let enterprises use the phone more effectively, Scott said.

“Right now, the phone is not imbued with brand,” he said.

The second product, Tellme CTI Connector, lets enterprises transfer calls from a company’s VoiceXML application to its call center. CTI Connector manages call queuing and call routing, and it processes critical customer data through screen-pops to the receiving call-center representative.

In announcing both products, Tellme hopes to separate itself from a number of other application-oriented network providers, including Telera and BeVocal, Scott said. In fact, the company doesn’t even consider itself in the same category as some of its so-called competitors, he added.

“One of the biggest challenges that we’re trying to get away from it being defined as a voice portal.”