Interactive Information Services

Interactive information services create customized content on the basis of caller input. There are many familiar applications of interactive information services:

• Weather lines that deliver current weather.
• Traffic lines that deliver up-to-the minute road conditions.
• Access to credit card account information via touch tone.
• Telephone banking.
• Touch tone based package and delivery tracking services.
• Stock market alert lines.

Interactive information services can be classified by the types of content they deliver:

• Services that deliver static content: these services deliver content that does not change frequently, for example, store hours and directions for a retail business.
• Services that manage "virtual community" content: these services would allow callers to record messages and data that other callers could retrieve later. For example: a classified ad service could have many different ads stored and allow recording of new ads and delivery of specific ads.
• Services that deliver content from a database: these services retrieve content from a corporate data store and deliver it to the caller. For example: access to credit card information via touch tone is accomplished by linking the telephony software with the credit card accounts database.
• Services that deliver content from the internet: these services retrieve content from web pages on the Internet and deliver that to the user. One example of such a service may allow the user to browse the web (to a limited degree) via touch tone.