Business Intelligence

Voxify is set to deliver automated customer self-service solutions to Convergys clients in the Direct Response industry. Voxify, positioned as the first company to create Automated Agents with the conversational skills to handle advanced customer service calls, made the announcement recently.

 

As a result of the partnership, Convergys (News - Alert) will market Voxify’s Direct Response Automated Agents integrated and hosted on Convergys’ SpeechPort VoiceXML platform. The blended offering is expected to provide best-of-breed solutions to the burgeoning Direct Response industry, which is a key vertical market for both Voxify and Convergys.

Through Voxify’s Direct Response Automated Agents, which will be delivered as a rapidly scalable hosted managed service offering, callers will be able to place orders, check order status or request information for Infomercial Direct Response campaigns and other retail industry sales and marketing programs.

Convergys will be able to leverage Voxify’s unique modular template architecture to rapidly deploy innovative speech self-service solutions capable of dynamically presenting purchase options and completing transactions in an efficient and consistent conversational manner. The goal is to replicate the performance of a company’s best call center agents.

Engaging callers in a true conversational manner will be the aim for Convergys solutions powered by Voxify’s Direct Response Automated Agents hosted on the Convergys SpeechPort platform. This will also eliminate the need to hold for an available agent.

 

Bill Andrews, general manager of Self-Service Solutions for Convergys, noted that benefits will not only be measured by calls completed, order conversion and customer satisfaction, but also by cost savings derived from delivering a hosted self-service solution, requiring minimal capital expenditure and can be deployed in less than 8 weeks.

Voxify’s Direct Response Automated Agents presents the added benefit of the ability to quickly change promotional offers, pricing or special up sell offers in a minimum of time providing marketing departments with the flexibility to quickly tune or optimize Infomercial promotional offers.

Due to the near un-limited on-demand capacity of the Convergys SpeechPort platform, customers are assured that all of their callers are answered immediately and not left in a hold queue awaiting an available agent. This provides tremendous benefit as call volumes typically spike and then quickly drop off after an infomercial airs.

According to Adeeb Shanaa, Voxify president and CEO, the Direct Response and Retail speech self-service applications are distinguished by an under interface design created to encourage callers to speak naturally within highly sophisticated call flows. The unique conversational skills of Voxify’s Direct Response Automated Agents, securely hosted on Convergys’ platform, is expected to deliver exceptional value to organizations in the Direct Response and Retail industries.

Self-service channels as a whole have gained popularity among call centers and customers alike. Automated agents and a self-service option has been an area of challenge as well as progress as speech recognition has gone from mediocre to competent systems. The inherent challenge with speech recognition is the differences in voice, tone, accent, pronunciation, etc., of different callers.

 

Convergys has a reputation for delivering powerful solutions to its customers that garner commendable results in customer satisfaction and improved efficiencies. Voxify will do well with Convergys as a partner and the powerful name on which to market.

Special Attractions

 

What’s the number one VoIP conference in terms of attendance? What’s the leading VoIP expo for exhibitors in terms of lead generation? And which VoIP industry event will feature special attractions for service providers, resellers, and the enterprise and SMB market as well as an overview on the Future of IP Telephony? Answer: INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, WEST, which runs October 10-13, 2006. See you in San Diego!         

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.