Speak to me
Allowing customers to talk to a contact centre system rather than having to punch in information on their phone’s keypad is the next step for a number of companies.
Mike Renzon, CEO at voice specialist Intelleca, says that organisations such as the Airports Company of SA have already deployed voice command systems to enable callers to check the arrival times of flights.
"Past versions of the software have enabled the software to understand simple combinations of numbers and letters. However, it’s only improvements made recently that have opened up the possibilities for using voice commands in more complex applications, such as those required by the financial services industry.
"The key to these improvements has been the continued development of the South African English language. Without a language set that caters specifically for the idiosyncrasies of South African English it would have been impossible to advance the use of the technology beyond the simplest uses."
Renzon says that the key to using this technology is enhancing the user experience, a statement contrary to many early users’ experience of voice command systems, where many longed for human intervention to break the frustration of getting the automated system to understand what they were asking for.
However, Steve Cramoyson, research director at Gartner, says users’ frustrations with such systems and interactive voice response (IVR) are more often than not related to poor system design.
"In general, people have three key frustrations with automated systems: being stuck in a queue; voice prompts not being clear, so customers don’t know which option to choose; and having to provide information more than once – such as a cell operator asking you for your number after you’ve already keyed it in."
In at least one of those areas, voice recognition technologies could provide assistance – by eliminating confusing voice prompts. Cramoyson says that instead of having to pick a pre-selected option from a list, customers could be asked to say what they want to do and the system should direct the call to the right area automatically, technology known as speech based routing.
When such systems are implemented correctly, Cramoyson says that apart from relieving customer frustration, they can also help companies slim down the number of phone numbers the public use to contact them. Anyone who has tried to resolve a query and is then bounced from department to department should welcome this technology when it’s deployed.
Renzon says the new versions of voice recognition systems have improved so much that current research indicates that most users prefer using speech to using a touch-tone phone to interact with an IVR system.
Part of the reason may be the way people use phones while calling their bank, which has changed since IVR systems were introduced. While previously most people called banks using landlines – where they could keep the headset to their ear while still pressing the required buttons – most people now use cellphones, which have smaller buttons but can’t be kept to the ear while pressing them, making interacting via touch-tone a more frustrating experience.
Ross Moody, manager of IVR and call automation at Standard Bank (one of the early adopters of the technology in SA), says that so far those who had used its speech-banking offering were positive and that the bank is already in the process of enhancing its systems to enable natural language commands.
Further ehancements such as speech based routing are also being investigated. This would enable the bank to resolve the frustrations many users have with existing menu structures on automated systems and point clients to the right functionality faster.
Says Moody: "In addition, we’re looking at implementing speaker verification, where voice patterns would be analysed to decide whether the person on the phone was who they said they were. Once the system is in place, we want to be sure that we have confidence in it before we launch it to our customers."
Moody says that would enable it to truly offer hands-free banking. Customers could give their account number and identify themselves without having to resort to punching numbers into a phone. However, the bank must still decide what confidence it had in the technology to accurately authenticate users.
Cramoyson says these systems need to be properly configured to cater for anomalies, such as when the user is ill and his voice may not match the voiceprint on file. In such cases it’s vital that the system is able to quickly switch to alternative verification methods so as not to inconvenience the client.
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