November 1999

Speaking To The Future

BY CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON

In the late 1800s, business was conducted in person or through the mail. Service was highly personalized, and companies adapted to the needs of their customers. In Canada, for example, the 1902 Eaton's Department Store catalogue invites customers to submit orders in one of 32 different languages! Throughout the 1900s, companies homogenized and automated customer service: the neighborhood bank gave way to automatic teller machines, the call center emerged, and the quality of customer service became dependent on the time, place, and medium of the interaction. In the 1990s "mass customization" came into vogue, and right behind it came e-mail and the Internet. These technologies allow businesses to extend their reach and conduct business faster, but, at the same time, customer service has never been worse. Today's challenge is to offer consistently good service to customers at a reasonable cost. To see the future, we need to look back to that shop counter of the late 1800s.

Throughout most of the late 1990s businesses have invested extensively in enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, often with no positive return on investment (ROI). Businesses have thrown an increasingly varied array of "service points" at their customers under the guise of being intimate. Instead, customers are simply confused.

Businesses must move beyond the exposure of front office and back office activities and instead re-architect their "front door." Instead of having a wide range of doors, as many businesses have today (e-mail, Web pages, bricks-and- mortar establishments, call centers), businesses should develop a single "portal" to optimize service for their customers.

For customers, this portal will serve as the "window" into your business. Today, businesses offer too many entry-points for their customers and provide inconsistent quality of service. Instead, businesses should concentrate on providing consistent levels of service through adaptation to the customer?s environment. Speech recognition technology is emerging as the critical factor to enable this transition.

THE POWER OF SPEECH
Spoken words are powerful. They are simple and effective communications tools for customers. Words can be spoken in person to customer service people, over the phone to automated systems, and over the Internet through multimedia devices. Speech recognition allows us to identify customers so that we can tailor their experiences. Speaker verification can ensure that a customer is who they claim to be. Continuous spoken word recognition lets customers interact with systems in a natural, comfortable manner. And multilingual speech recognition can determine the native language of the caller, apply appropriate grammatical rules, and then interact accordingly. The spoken word overcomes the typed interface and fixed location of the PC, as well as the difficulty that traditional telephony interfaces present.

However, it isn’t just about technology. The shortfalls of the computer-telephony integration (CTI) industry result largely from excellent technology ideas with poor business justifications and little distribution, support, and systems integration infrastructure. Businesses need to move beyond pure acquisitions and instead focus on business strategies supported by technology and offered by distribution partners.

For a business to achieve ROI targets, they must first be able to measure the impact of the technology on revenue as well as on expenses. All too often businesses focus on the expense line while ignoring the revenue line, or simply writing the expense off as “soft dollars.” This is a mistake and almost always leads
to sub-optimal implementation. Additionally, businesses need to become less enamoured with flashy interfaces that enable them to make changes “on the fly.” In reality, most businesses have neither the expertise nor the time to invest in tuning these systems for optimal performance.

Good technology implementations always act in support of the company’s competitive advantage. These systems have clear ROI targets, usually measured in months rather than years. The technology partners need to be able to demonstrate clear expertise at selling, installing, integrating, and supporting the system in live customer environments. The impact of these systems on the customer is usually dramatic, but preferably transparent.

The best technology solutions enable the customer to interact with the business in the manner most comfortable to them. Customers will always select the alternative that is easiest to use. If an application does not meet this simple criterion, it simply will not be used.

WHAT COULD BE SIMPLER?
Speech technology holds up well given this structured model of technology assessment. For companies whose basis of competition is personalized service, speech recognition technology enables simplified call routing to the best service point in a single transaction. For companies competing as lowest cost producers, speech recognition technology removes costs and improves employee productivity, particularly at the switchboard.

The best speech recognition companies are pursuing distribution relationships that match the application. For example, when businesses are implementing speech-directed attendant applications, the best vendor partner would be focused on selling enterprise network systems. Finally, speech technology, through its power and flexibility, will always be the alternative that is easiest to use, as long as the system is implemented with an eye (and ear) on the caller. Speech-enabling an application does not mean applying speech to existing call flows; rather, the flows need to be re-architected to leverage the power of the medium.

In the new millennium customer service will be better. Callers will not be greeted with a pre-recorded choice list. Web visitors will not be greeted with a search engine. Customers at an ATM will not need a special card and password. Instead, business will interact with their customers starting with a simple, spoken request: “How may I assist you?” How very 1880s.

Christopher Thompson is vice president of strategy at Locus Dialogue. Christopher Thompson came to Locus Dialogue from GartnerGroup’s Dataquest, where he was the global director and principal analyst for the company’s Enterprise Network, Call Center, and Computer Telephony Research Programs. Locus Dialogue develops and commercializes speech recognition applications that offer the highest level of caller care while increasing corporate productivity and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). For more information, please visit the Web site at www.locusdialogue.com.