CALL CENTERS - "HOW MAY I HELP YOU?"

Call centers - "how may i help you?"

In 1952, Bell Labs investigators presented a basic system recognizing numbers spoken over a telephone: “Speech Recognition” was born. Nowadays, after significant technological progress, these systems are able to deal with infinite accents and languages.[1]

The capability of the “Speech recognition” system is to recognize words in natural speech and then convert them into a machine-readable format. Call centers use “Speech recognition” software to handle incoming customer calls. Nevertheless, it is essential to distinguish between "speech recognition" and "voice recognition". Indeed, "voice recognition" is recognizes a particular person's voice.[2]

What mainly attracted companies was its cost efficiency. Thus, appointing these machines reduced expenditure on employee staffing and maintenance. It should be underlined that by choosing a BPO company, business expenses related to employee maintenance directly decrease. But if the company uses an answering machine, operational costs could be reduced even more. In fact, this technological system can assist corporations reduce costs but also mechanize the handling of a high percentage of incoming customer calls. Some businesses combine speech recognition with Interactive Voice Response (IVC) to advance service quality. Indeed, as automated systems are available even when call center agents are not, effectiveness and productivity can be progressed, particularly for sales and collections corporations. For instance, the company One Telecom is using speech recognition technology in order to recover customer service in a mixed live agent and self-service setting. This system strengthened the company's data base of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and now tracks callers to 1 of 35 self-service units depending on their wants acknowledged by the speech recognition software throughout the call. 2

However, “Speech recognition” also presents drawbacks. Indeed, background noise and systems' low aptitude to identify accents and vulgarisms reduce its effectiveness, although some advances are still being made, such as with the Dragon software. Even though speech recognition actually requires more effort, conceivable earnings are enormous if implemented effectively, as said by Steve Rutledge, vice president of product marketing at Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories[3]. Still, the main element making answering machines short is their incompetence to attend to precise and complicated inquiries or difficulties. Indeed, numerous problems can only be listened by live agents, where business end consumers or probable clients needed sophisticated and specific clarification. Under such conditions, speech recognition software by itself would not be sufficient.[4]

To conclude, businesses may lower operation costs drastically by reducing staff and maintenance. Nevertheless, delivering ineffective customer service by not answering to specific customer wants could damage the corporation’s image significantly. In that way, speech recognition is a valuable tool but still needs important progress in order to be as effective as firms need it to be.

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[1] Borzo, J. (2007). Now You're Talking. Available: Money CNN, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/02/01/8398978/. Last accessed 10th Oct 2013.

[2] Search CRM. (2009). Leveraging speech recognition technology in call centers. Available: Search CRM, http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/report/Leveraging-speech-recognition-technology-in-call-centers. Last accessed 9th Oct 2013.

[3] Bailor. C (2005). Avoiding the Speech Rec. Wreck. Available: destinationCRM.com, http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Avoiding-the-Speech-Rec.-Wreck-42727.aspx. Last accessed 9th Oct 2013.

[4] Johnson, A. (2012). Pros And Cons Of Automated Answering Service By BPO Manila. Available: Fusion Blog, http://www.fusionbposervices.com/blog/answering-service-by-bpo-manila.html. Last accessed 10th Oct 2013.