Is it Time to Reconsider Voice Recognition Technology?

By Renee Oricchio

Like most major companies that spend millions of dollars a year on advertising, Charles Schwab always features people. People connect best with people. What’s cutting edge about Charles Schwab, however, is that it doesn’t hire actors anymore to voice its spots. Every voice heard in a Charles Schwab commercial is computer-generated. The viewing and listening public would never know, given the seamless and natural inflection of the voices.

That’s how sophisticated speech technology has become.

While most call centers that use integrated voice recognition (IVR) systems still haven’t upgraded to that level of sophistication, it’s a preview of what’s to come in the near future.

Speech self-service menus are getting better, with the technology now able to recognize most accents and dialects. And as the Charles Schwab ads illustrate, computer-generated voices don’t have to sound like that factory message on most home voicemail systems.

Alan Hubbard, a senior vice president with The Aberdeen Group, says his organization’s research shows that 75% to 80% of all companies have an IVR system.

“Most are still using a touch-tone system,” he says. “But out of those figures, not quite 20% of those companies are now using speech self-service in their call centers. Our survey shows 30% more plan to do the same within the next 24 months.”

But while adoption numbers are on the rise, survey after survey shows most customers still can’t stand talking with a machine.

IVR system report cards
A variety of recently published surveys have found that customers give IVR systems poor grades. The Aberdeen Group survey found that customer dissatisfaction rates ranged from 60% to 70%. The number of companies that reported poor performance of their automated voice systems was 43%. Those two factors help explain why half of all customers abandoned calls before they were able to get the help they needed.

What frustrates customers most about automated voice menus? A survey from the Yankee Group found that 63% of callers were distressed by long hold times, and 50% reported that automated menus were confusing. Other major complaints include: being asked the same question more than once, getting trapped in a menu of options that don’t apply to the customer’s needs, and lack of personalization. The group’s survey also found that 18% bypass the automated menu 100% of the time when they can.

So if the technology is getting better and more widespread, why is customer feedback so abysmal?

“You can’t just blame the vendor,” says Ken Landoline, the program manager for customer centric strategies at The Yankee Group. “Most companies think they can take it on and run it themselves. Monitoring the system is critical.”

Here are some of the most common mistakes enterprises make after their IVR system is installed:

• Poor development of speech self-service menus   “What you don’t want to do is just adopt your touch tone system,” says Hubbard. Usually this is best done by the vendor.
  
• Failing to monitor analytics   While most companies have learned to watch their Web analytics with hawk-like attention, noting the pain points where customers click off and tweaking the site accordingly, the same vigilance rarely takes place at the call center. “Plan on at least partnering with the vendor for about the first three to six months to fine-tune that script,” says Landonline.
  
• Too many choices   There may be 10 numbers on the keypad, but that doesn’t mean they should all be used. The rule of thumb is to have no more than three or four options for each question.
  
• Not involving the agents  “If there’s a problem, guess who’s going to be the first person to hear about it? The agent at the end of the phone call, of course. So they need to be involved in the integration of the system,” says Hubbard.

Time to upgrade?
The biggest mistake, for many companies, may be in not realizing it’s time to upgrade their systems, in the first place. Despite the pressures to cut back in a shaky economy, it’s actually an important time to consider making changes. The technology has improved dramatically in recent years and is likely well worth the investment to upgrade.

• From proprietary to open platform Many CIOs are turning to open standards like VoiceXML 2.0. Developing new and more sophisticated applications that offer more self-service capabilities for customers like supplying account information, placing an order or seeking a transaction confirmation can place less demand on human operators, which always saves money.
  
• Network-based solutions   When in doubt, let the vendor host the whole system. Advantages include scalability and greater agility to handle spikes in caller traffic. IT managers can still control tweaking certain applications as needed along the way.
  
• Session initiation protocol (SIP)  Mostly used as a signal protocol for VoIP, the primary benefit of SIP is to create, modify, and terminate sessions with one or multiple participants.
  
• Real-time transport protocol (RTP)   This is a standardized packet format used to deliver audio and video over the Internet. Its strength in an IVR system is its “push to talk” support.
  
• Level 3 VoIP   Level 3 is a private company that owns one of the largest chunks of the Internet backbone in the world and offers the most robust VoIP services. When shopping for a vendor, IT managers want to make sure they are getting VoIP support sophisticated enough to handle toll-free numbers and compatibility with all the major wireless carriers. Using VoIP also saves money by eliminating additional toll charges as calls are routed to various numbers and locations within the system.

Leveraging IVR as a Business Intelligence technology
Business units within the enterprise are just starting to realize there’s more to an IVR system than better facilitating the call center.

“The contact center is drowning in data, and what happens is that companies struggle with how to collate that data and put it into a cohesive way for management,” says Hubbard. “I truly think in the future, IVR systems are going to be a big competitive differentiator.”

Even with the advent of alternative contact channels, such as online ordering, Web chat and email, that opportunity is not likely to diminish anytime soon. According to the Aberdeen Group, 77% of all customer contact is still dependent on the telephone -- regardless of whom or what picks up the phone on the other end.