DTMF recognition on Plum hosting platform

[ddcohen]

Our application is being hosted on the Plum hosting platform. When users first call, they are asked to enter a 5-digit code to identity themselves. About 20% of our users have reported that our application is not always recognizing all 5 digits of DTMF input (though it is recognizing some of the digits pressed). We initially assumed that this was due to poor cell phone reception on the part of the callers, but we were then surprised to learn that a number of users reported that they actually had this problem on a land line, and were only able to get it to work successfully by calling from a cell phone. Are there any known issues with recognition of DTMF input by the Plum hosting platform?

Thank you,
David Cohen

[support]

Hi David,

Could you please provide us with the IVR code you are using? This would help us better troubleshoot this issue you are having.

It could be a case of increasing the termtimeout and interdigittimeout in your code.

Regards,
Plum Support

[ddcohen]

Here is the relevant snippet of code:

Code: Select all

      <property name="inputmodes" value="dtmf" />
      <field name="secretCode" type="digits?length=5">
         <prompt>Please press your 5-digit code on your telephone keypad.</prompt>
         <filled>...</filled>
         <nomatch>I'm sorry.  I didn't get exactly 5 digits.  Please check the 5-digit code on your computer screen again and enter it on your telephone keypad.</nomatch>
         <noinput>...</noinput>
      </field>

As you can see, I didn't set the termtimeout and interdigittimeout properties, so they remain at their default values. Perhaps the interdigittimeout default of 1 second is the problem. I will try increasing that.

[support]

Hi David,

Yes, try increasing the interdigittimeout value to give you users more time to enter the 5-digit number.

Also, you could check your call logs to see what behavior your users are experiencing when entering the 5-digit number (i.e. noinput or nomatch behavior).

Regards,
Plum Support

[ddcohen]

I know that it's nomatch, since they're hearing the text that we play on nomatch.

Unfortunately, the call logs don't display what digits were detected. It would be nice if I could capture this. Can I put something like this...

<data name="verification" src="http://ourdomain.com/WriteCode.aspx" namelist="secretCode" />

...inside the "nomatch" tag, where WriteCode.aspx is a page in which I will capture the input and write it to my database or e-mail it to my mailbox? Will the namelist work inside "nomatch" just as it works inside "filled"?

-- David

[support]

Hi David,

You would not be able to capture the digits entered during a nomatch, since the platform only captures what was entered upon matching the grammar.

If users are consistently getting a nomatch, there's a strong possibility that the users may not have enough time to enter the correct number of digits. Please let us know if your users are still experiencing issues after increasing the termtimeout or interdigittimeout in your IVR code.

Regards,
Plum Support