Developers can roll out to subscribers customer services like IVR apps, call conferencing, and interactive fax, building loyalty and lowering churn. OEMs also may be interested in this service creation environment for their own products. APEX recently launched an offering into the IP space, the APEX Media Gateway, which will let service providers use OmniView to add inexpensive VoIP to their service menus. The secret is in the middleware, the protective layer that takes care of all the humdrum details of talking to Dialogic or Brooktrout boards. On the application side, even though Courier should have enough gadgets for even the most jaded subscriber, new carriers or service providers can come up with their own distinct services by purchasing and mastering Call Technologies' Call Builder service creation environment, the enhanced service industry's equivalent of IVR's app builders.
Callers reach subscribers using only a single number for both fax and voice.
Besides being able to reply to and forward voicemail messages from their GUIs, subscribers also can add voice attachments to emails. Roving subscribers can even listen to email messages from a phone and respond with a voice reply that gets attached to the original email. A smart auto attendant tells subscribers how many messages, both voice and email, are currently in the Unread box, and Courier conveniently announces subject headers of emails, letting a user decide whether he wants to sit through the boss' millennium mission statement or skip it.