Next-Gen DA

Assisting Carrier Revenue Through Outsourced Directory Assistance

Americans spend more than $7 billion calling 411, making it not only a lucrative revenue stream but a proven communications channel for carriers. Seeing the opportunity, outsourcers are offering network operators ways to leverage the service everyone uses to gain value-added revenue, and differentiate their offerings.

The average ILEC charges around $1.25 for a call to directory assistance. Adding more features to the mix can maximize margins. “These additional services generate tremendous pull-through benefits for the carrier,” says a spokesperson at Envox Worldwide, which makes a voice service development platform. “This is not surprising when you consider that 90 percent of every call to wireless directory assistance is profit, with that profit split 50/50 between the operator and the wholesale [directory assistance] provider.”

Turnkey and hosted packages from iTouchPoint Enhanced Directory Services, Metro One Telecommunications Inc., Tellme Networks Inc. and others include operator-assisted voice and automated voice services, along with SMS and Internet-based delivery channels. They also deliver national directory assistance along with turn-by-turn driving directions and traffic conditions, an entertainment guide with movie listings, theater, events and performance schedules, restaurant reviews and reservations, stock quotes, flight information, sports, weather and more.

Some directory assistance gambits are temporary, meant to promote event-related content or merchandise from other lines of business. Tellme Networks enabled a directory assistance “skin” last summer during the “Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith” release that delivered information in a Yoda voice and played Star Wars trivia during wait times. “Carriers can leverage these tie-ins to cross-promote ringtones, in one case,” explains Laura Marino, director of product management for Tellme Networks.

The roving nature of the wireless user opens up yet more opportunities for the carrier to find value through the directory-assistance channel. For instance, when Cingular Wireless customers call 411 to find a movie theater, an integrated application hosted and provided by Tellme Networks and m-commerce provider Fandango gives users the opportunity to buy their movie tickets by phone. The outsourcer also offers turn-by-turn driving directions.

And wireless users can receive their listings in multiple formats. Earlier this year directory-assistance provider INFONXX enhanced its TextDirect Suite to feature a two-way SMS directory assistance. Using a carrier-set branded short code, consumers can query INFONXX’s business, residential and government directory assistance listings by sending an SMS containing the category search or listing information (name, address, city and/or state). The consumer receives a return SMS with the listing information, but the operator also can include relevant content relating to the listing, such as sports scores or event information, or links to merchandising sites. “Mobile-originated SMS messaging has forever changed users’ perceptions of wireless data and will continue to be the dominant wireless messaging application,” says Yancy Oshita, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at INFONXX. “Marrying it with directory assistance creates an enormous marketing opportunity for wireless carriers and MVNOs.”

Service providers are beginning to pick up on the opportunity these outsourced offers provide, both from a revenue and customer satisfaction perspective. Vonage Marketing, a subsidiary of VoIP provider Vonage Holdings Corp., and Cincinatti Bell Inc. both chose Excell Services this year to provide customers with enhanced directory assistance, including movie listings, stock quotes, sports scores and more. “Excell, based on economies of scale, allows us to consider a more complete and competitive range of services for our customers,” says Ann Crable, senior vice president of operations at Cincinnati Bell. “Because of Excell’s state-of-the-art technology, we have the opportunity down the road to further enhance our directory offerings for our customers without the investment required for us to do the same in-house.”

More enhancements are on the way, specifically facilitated by the intersection of data and voice. Tellme is working on a way to provide pop-up maps to those asking for driving directions, for instance. Meanwhile, INFONXX just joined the VoiceXML Forum, committed to supporting the implementation and promotion of VoiceXML as an industry standard for providing voice access to Internet content and services. VoiceXML has been gaining market acceptance through a wide array of speech-enabled applications that can be brought to bear on directory assistance. Meanwhile, Envox Worldwide has introduced Envox 6.3, a communications development platform certified by the VoiceXML Forum, for developing and deploying a wide range of open, standards-based voice solutions, including IVR and enhanced self-service, alerts and notifications, voice portals and enterprise communications.

“Automated directory assistance is a challenging application and requires a lot of expertise in many areas, and the carriers expect us to innovate,” says Marino. “We are constantly looking at what we can do to add value, and the future of directory assistance will be far beyond what we see today.”

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