The auto attendant has become a crucial tool for medium- to large-sized businesses seeking to provide prompt and reliable customer support, speed internal communications, and reduce the cost of telephony operations.
Today's auto attendant solutions sport advanced speech recognition and call routing capabilities, allowing customers to connect to the person they are trying to reach simply by saying their name, thus reducing the need for live operator or receptionist support.
In addition, these systems allow customers to dial into the company phone system at any time, 24/7/365, allowing companies to extend customer support beyond regular company hours. What's more these systems allow company employees to access important vendors or business contacts via the speech interface, increasing productivity for today's mobile 'road warriors.'
Today's auto attendant systems also provide increased flexibility by allowing companies to create customized greetings. These greetings provide customers with important information about company operating hours (i.e holidays, business hours vs. after hours, etc.). These greetings can also be customized 'on-the-fly,' for special situations such as inclement weather and emergency closings.
However the biggest advantage of the speech-enabled auto attendant is that it enables companies to offload a significant amount of operator assisted calls while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. This allows the company to reduce their overall operating costs. Company employees, partners and customers enjoy using auto attendant systems because it allows them to quickly connect to the destination they want to reach without being put on hold or dealing with a live 'gatekeeper.'
The problem with many of today's off-the-shelf auto attendant solutions is that they are not delivered as managed services, and therefore do not provide adequate quality of service. Sure, they are low cost - but the vendors of these systems often take a 'set-it-up-and-forget-it' approach to customer support. They might provide the customer with a web-based administrative panel to control basic functions of the auto attendant system, including adjusting call routing and updating the directory, but it's up to the company's IT team or some other employee to monitor and maintain the system on a routine basis.
Parlance Corp., which has been providing speech-enabled auto attendant solutions to medium- to large-sized businesses for nearly 14 years, takes a different approach. They deliver a speech-enabled auto attendant system as a fully-managed service, enabling them to guarantee system accuracy and customer satisfaction.
During a recent interview, company Marketing Manager Mark Bedard explained that the fully-managed service aspect is the main reason Parlance's nameConnector service has enjoyed a 96 percent customer retention rate since it first introduced its auto attendant solution as a managed service in 1996.
Bedard said when Parlance Corp. first started offering nameConnector service in 1996 it was also offered as a basically 'do-it-yourself' solution.
'We'd provide customers with the hardware and software -- and we'd set the system up for them -- but from there they'd be on their own as far as managing and maintaining the system.' he explained.
But very soon the company determined that that approach 'simply doesn't work.'
'The problem is what we call churn,' Bedard explained. 'In any given year an enterprise's call directory can change by up to 40 percent. And if you're talking about a 40,000-name directory for a major corporation, that 40 percent change is just huge - and it's a lot of work to keep up with all the people being hired and fired; getting married and changing their names; or changing their offices or locations. These are the things that, with a do-it-yourself solution, the company IT department or telecom manager has to deal with on a daily basis. And the problem is, it usually gets pushed to the back of the priority list, due to the increasing demands on these valuable employees' time.'
Bedard said in order for a speech-enabled directory system to be successful 'you need at least an 85 percent connection rate in order to get callers to fully embrace the system and use it every time without pressing '0' to go to the operator - which is exactly what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to allow our customers to eliminate or consolidate operator positions by off-loading the majority of the calls going to the operator.' He said this data was culled from the company's own research into what makes an auto attendant system work successfully.
But hitting that 85 percent connection rate can be very challenging: 'It requires 24/7 maintenance and monitoring of the system,' Bedard said. 'So it was decided in 1997 that we would go with a fully managed service approach for nameConnector. As a result, we now take on responsibility for the success of each customer's system - which is unique in the industry.'
Basically what it comes down to is expertise in the directory. 'The directory is the heart and sole of the auto attendant system,' Bedard said, 'and if you don't have the proper information in the directory, callers can't get connected to the right person - or it gives you the wrong name and the wrong department - and then people say 'well the system doesn't work.' Well, most likely the speech recognizer, the routing table, and all of the other components of the speech solution work very well, it's just that the directory hasn't been properly maintained.'
Parlance's auto attendant service, nameConnector, remains an on-site system, but each system is fully managed from the company's central office in order to keep the directory up-to-date as well as to proactively troubleshoot any issues with the system.'We have a whole armada of tools - some manual, some automated - set in place to monitor our customers' systems and alert us when there are missed connections or improper pronunciations,' Bedard said. 'Anything that will lead to a missed connection we will be looking out for. And then our service engineers review the data and take appropriate action.'
That doesn't mean companies don't have access to their directories, they do, via a web-based administrative toolbox. In addition, each customer has an internal 'Registry Administrator' who acts as a liaison between the customer and Parlance. That person is responsible for editing the directory - but Parlance's managed service takes that a step further and serves as a quality assurance mechanism to guarantee better system performance.
Bedard said part of the ongoing maintenance of the system includes 'training' the speech engine to accurately interpret 'as many mispronunciations as possible.' For example, if there's a pronunciation problem that is leading to missed connections, someone from Parlance's support team will contact the employee directly and ask him how many different ways his or her name is mispronounced, and then enter those pronunciations into the speech recognition system.
Parlance offers its nameConnector service under two pricing models: 'We offer a paid-up license option, as well as a monthly lease option (subscription),' Bedard said. From there the pricing structure 'is based on the size of the directory and the number of ports used,' he said.
All hardware and software reside on-site. Parlance provides fully-configured systems which are delivered to the customer's site and installed in one day. Therefore, the customer doesn't have to invest in any new equipment - basically they are leasing the equipment from Parlance. In the event there is a hardware problem that cannot be resolved remotely, Parlance will send a technician to the customer's site to fix the problem or it will ship a new pre-configured server to the customer's site as a replacement in 1-2 business days.
Bedard also pointed out that Parlance has an array of value-added applications for nameConnector that can offer considerable financial and operational benefits. 'Personal Directories' is one such application that has proved popular with customers. In this application, customer employees can each set up and maintain their own nameConnector directories that can be accessed anywhere, anytime by speaking their own unique password at the main nameConnector greeting. 'We have one executive that said he has over 2,000 business contacts that he requires access to on occasion.' says Bedard. 'With his Personal Directory app, he speed dials the nameConnector, says his password, and speaks the name of the person he wants to talk to. No more scrolling through endless lists, or hunting for the name. Sales people and other mobile workers love it too.'
In addition to Personal Directories, Parlance has applications for Presence, Conference Call Setup, Disaster Recovery, and more. 'Many of these applications were developed specifically to alleviate a business problem a customer was experiencing.' Bedard continues. 'And this is where our incredible development department really shines - listening to a customer's problems, and then focusing our technology and expertise to form a solution that previously didn't exist. We tend to get excited about those types of things around here.'
To learn more about Parlance Corp.'s fully managed auto attendant service, nameConnector, click here.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard