Go BackTaking the Dynamic Approach to Speech Technology
Comment from Bruce Eidsvik, Vice President of Sales, EMEA Voice Portals, Genesys Telecommunications
Speech IVRs significantly reduce the unit cost of interactions, but customers are not 'units', and do not respond well to being treated as such. The most effective speech recognition solutions are those that act as an extra agent in the contact centre - and the only way for that approach to work is if it is integrated properly. Bruce Eidsvik, vice president of sales, EMEA Voice Portals at Genesys, shows how speech recognition deployed correctly enable businesses to expand their resources to create a more effective Dynamic Contact Centre.
Customer dissatisfaction continues to increase in the contact centre industry, with 64 per cent of customers perceiving standards to be falling. Contact centres that perform well are valued very highly by customers: recent Genesys research has shown 75 per cent would be willing to pay higher prices for better quality service. Those businesses that cannot shape up, are likely to be shipped out - by the customer.
Managing a contact centre is a fine balancing act, and no fixed 'set-in-stone' strategy can ever be effective all of the time - there are too many potential variables, and activity rates fluctuate too much throughout the course of a day. To address this contact centres need to adopt a more dynamic approach to day-to-day operations, creating more flexible resources and business processes to respond to these intra-day changes.
Speech automation is an important part of building the Dynamic Contact Centre, helping share call traffic more effectively. In fact, recent research from Gartner has shown that 47 per cent of customers would have a more satisfactory experience if they used a speech solution.
IVR has its place in the Contact Centre
Many customers only require access to basic services - for example requesting balances from their bank, submitting meter readings to their utility company, and here an automated solution is perfect. Long wait times, agents overly driven by sales and incompetent staff, often mean customers prefer an automated approach for these services. Contact centres should embrace this desire for automation, and design systems to take maximum advantage of it.
It is important that customers feel they're making a choice when using an automated system, so they have to be at the centre of the deployment. Simply deploying a voice recognition IVR will not automatically resolve all existing problems, neither will 'speechifying' a touchtone system!
IVR - another agent in the Dynamic Contact Centre
Resourcing a contact centre involves matching demand with supply - ie. calls with the means to resolve them - and IVRs can handle thousands of calls simultaneously, so are a big asset. Speech recognition technology enhances this benefit by ensuring an automated interaction has a natural feel. The persona - the voice and approach at the front-end of the system - strengthens this by feeling like a regular agent, only one that can deal with large amounts of customers at once!
Whether identification and verification or the whole call is automated, an IVR benefits agents, enabling them to be more flexible and focus on more tasks, for example emails and other media. High-value customers can be extracted from the IVR to boost service or to target more cross- and up-sales. Where traffic volumes are high, efficiency is more important so agents will leave customers in the IVR where possible and practical.
Natural integration into the Dynamic Contact Centre is what makes speech work most effectively. The correct customer interactions must be automated, to be sure, but the ability to dynamically push or pull them between the IVR and agents as necessary is key. This approach makes the IVR more like 'just another agent' in the Dynamic Contact Centre.
Making a Speech Deployment Happen
If no other advice could be given on deploying a speech solution in the contact centre, the one focal point should be the customer. Throughout the initial feasibility assessments, purchase, design, testing and deployment, you should always remember "how will this make things better for our customers?"
First Create the Business Case
The business case revolves around value for the customer, because that is what will create the return on investment. Issues to balance are customers' willingness to use an IVR versus usability, which can affect that willingness. A speech solution has to encourage customers to use it. That relieves agent overload and enhances capability to generate sales.
IVRs give return on investment opportunities, but also help enhance service, because they can give customers another viable service option. If this boosts satisfaction, it will then boost a contact centre's flexibility. When an IVR is genuinely integrated from a customer perspective it can be a value-adding element of the Dynamic Contact Centre.
Then Design around the caller AND your business needs
Assess both caller and business needs. If everything could be automated, costs would be minimal, but service would suffer so a balance must be found. Customers may not use an IVR for loan applications, for example, but they would to check their balance or to make a credit card payment. Defining where you should - not could - automate gives you the information for a structured design and implementation. These definitions also identify the call types for the agents, which helps further focus skills training and development of resources.
Throughout the research, design, build, test and deploy stages, bear in mind the goals that are set out at the beginning and stick to those findings. It is easy to make unnecessary additions based on what you could do, undermining decisions made on what you should do. Then test the solution after key stages of development, to ensure it does what it's supposed to.
Design the Persona to add value to the automated transaction
Once the business and the caller needs are defined, the transaction types are identified and the design has been verified, there is still one more key stage before deployment: the persona, which is vital to the success of the speech deployment. It makes the initial interaction with the customer, welcomes them to your company, and upholds the brand image throughout the course of the call. The voice, the words used and the intonation are all critical in creating a welcoming, brand enhancing speech IVR. The persona should resemble the type of agent you would like customers to interact with, this creates a better, more consistent interaction for the customer and the business, and adds value to the application.
If you want customers to choose the IVR over an agent, it has to get the job done quickly, efficiently and with no stress for the customer. An IVR will rarely start out life as something a customer prefers to use - they may be skeptical, but use it because it is quicker than queuing. Ensuring high quality interactions is what will bring them back. A speech solution is a good complement to an agent service - not a replacement - which is why it should have defined responsibilities, effective resolution processes and be fully integrated into a dynamic contact centre set-up. At the end of the day, you wouldn't give a human agent a long list of tasks that they're unable to handle, so the same considerations should be given to the persona.
Vodafone Australia
Vodafone Australia has one of the most famous speech-based IVR solutions. The persona was designed very carefully to match the brand expectations of its customers, and resolve the enquiries directed to the IVR in precisely the way callers would like them to be resolved. "Lara" has been incredibly successful - customer satisfaction has reached new high levels, and she has received over 100 marriage proposals!
Dixons
Dixons saw a rise in basic after-sales service calls, and so developed a customer-focused speech automation project to help deal with the rise. It has been able to re-direct calls to the IVR, with the result that it saved a year's worth of man-hours in the space of only one month.
British Airways
Britain's most recognisable airline has five million flight enquiry calls every year, a figure which rises around 10 per cent year-on-year. This places a large burden on agents, who also have to deal with bookings and all other enquiries - luggage for example. Through the implementation of a speech self-service solution, it has been able to automate flight enquiries, alleviating the stress on agents, and reducing the cost of each call by around 95 per cent.
