Welcome to the new and improved
world of speech automated self-service. Once a 'nice concept, but not
reality' application, the adoption of speech recognition within the
enterprise is poised for breakthrough in the coming years. In the Gartner
report 'Speech Recognition Telephony Software: Worldwide 2002-2007,'
analysts said the speech recognition market is poised to reach more than
$258 million by 2007, with contact center and business portal applications
the largest segments for adoption.
Why now? In a nutshell, it comes down to customer loyalty and the need to
keep customers happy. Customers will readily adopt such services, with the
following caveats: they must be quick, simple and reliable. Additional
important by-products of speech recognition and contact center tools include
improved employee productivity, lower operational costs and increased
revenue. But ultimately speech automated self-service solutions are about
the customer.
Customers are more savvy and smarter than ever, with more technology choices
before them. Every interaction customers have with your enterprise must say,
'We value your business, we value your time and, most important, we value
you.' Enterprises must provide consistent quality communications at each
touchpoint. This creates two very important complementary results: You
minimize customer frustration, while also providing this precious
constituent with the right information quickly.
But this begs the next question ' how? How can an enterprise implement or
upgrade current customer contact applications and improve the engagements it
has with its customers? And how can an enterprise do so without spending
large sums of capital?
Step One: Identify the business transaction.
You must think about what type of transaction you want to enable and how to
do so. Transactions well suited for speech automation include simple,
repetitive transactions such as account balancing or order status reporting,
as well as more complex transactions such as obtaining a stock quote for one
of 15,000 companies listed on a stock exchange. Regardless of the complexity
of the transaction, companies need to find an easy way for customers to
interact with them, as this presents an ideal opportunity to improve
customer loyalty. For example, some banks permit customers to carry out
financial transactions at a time suitable to them by simply speaking their
instructions. The instructions are converted into commands that are executed
on the bank's mainframe computers. Responses are provided to customers in
natural speech. The customer does not need to sort through a confusing
multitude of options; nor does the customer need to be on the phone for an
extended period. By understanding what type of information a customer will
seek, companies are better able to ensure their customers get the
information they need quickly.
While this is the primary benefit of the interactive voice response (IVR)-enabled
approach, another is reduced costs for the organization in two key areas:
time and resources. Rather than present a long list of alternatives, which
requires a customer to stay on the phone longer, a speech-enabled IVR helps
the customer cut to the chase. A call that usually takes 90 seconds can be
reduced to 30 seconds. Also, if a customer can receive the information
quickly through the IVR-enabled approach, there's less chance he or she will
engage a company representative. This creates a more effective deployment
and use of call center representatives, freeing them up for more critical
customer service needs.
Step Two: Evaluate current investments.
You must evaluate the type of infrastructure you currently have in place.
Then you must determine if your contact center is relatively up-to-date (5
to 7 years old). Also, you need to consider your plan to derive the maximum
value out of your legacy systems and, in particular, you must determine how
you can extend or enhance your contact center with new technologies. A
converged voice and data networking solution that blends IP
telephony-enabled applications with legacy systems protects an existing
investment while also enhancing the system. It enables seamless transfer of
voice and data information associated with that call to an agent's desktop,
so the caller does not have to repeat information.
IVR platforms and Voice Extensible Markup Language (XML) will work within an
existing infrastructure to manage multiple forms of communications securely
and reliably. The VoiceXML standard allows enterprises to leverage back-end
Web infrastructure and enables companies to provide access to the same
information and transactions via the phone as on the Internet. For example,
a customer can transfer money on the Web and then use the phone to hear the
updated balance. Other features to consider are end-to-end project
management, training, installation and ongoing maintenance and enhancement
services.
Step Three: Pick the right tools.
To meet your specific business requirements, you need to create and deploy
flexible advanced speech recognition applications based on various speech
recognition tools (large vocabulary recognition, natural language
understanding, speaker verification and text-to-speech). This will require a
mix of both standardized and customized applications, as each plays an
important role in a comprehensive speech recognition deployment.
An application portfolio that consists of a large number of standardized
applications with completed design, coding and testing helps ensure you have
a good foundation on which to build your solution. From there, you can
customize applications with specific prompts or host interfaces that map to
your specific business needs.
In the end, you must make the customer your primary focus. In this context,
speech recognition applications are becoming a vital element in a top-notch
CRM environment. With the proper system integration, reliability,
scalability and investment protection, you can make these technologies a
vital component of your organization's competitive advantage. Done right, a
speech recognition system can yield shorter calls, increased accuracy of
information provided, elimination of dreaded long hold times and, in the
end, a more satisfied customer. By-products include reduced agent expenses
and well-coordinated transaction processing. Done wrong, you have one very
unhappy customer. In this economic environment, that's the one thing no one
can afford.
Roxann Swanson is vice president and general manager, enterprise
communication applications for Nortel Networks (www.nortelnetworks.com)
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