Use Case

We want to create a VXML self-service application for our company, ACME Corporation. Within that application, we will collect information from the customer that will allow us to determine the customer’s segment (that is, is the customer a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum customer), as well as the value of an order (in American dollars) that the customer has placed with our company.

Based on the values for the customer segment and the order, we will use predefined business rules to determine whether to play a prompt to the customer that offers them a special promotion. In other words, the logic that will determine whether the special offer should be made to the customer will be defined within the business rules themselves, and not within the VXML application.

This example does not describe how the logic would be created in the VXML application to collect information from the customer, look up related information in a customer database (for example, to establish the value of the customer’s order), or play the prompt to the customer. It just demonstrates the use of business rules to supply the necessary information to the client application—in this case the VXML application—to allow the application to take the correct next step.