Vocalis: A new phase of opportunity

I'm not convinced that voice recognition is currently attractive technology for call centers.

Currently, I can call a computerised call center, speak to a recorded voice and either complete my transaction or be led to the correct human operator through keying in numbers from my keypad in response to lists given to me by the recording.

How does voice recognition improve this process? It offers no advantage in getting connected to the correct area, but gives a lot more scope for error than simply keying in numbers.

The real potential, perhaps, lies in making the human intervention even more distant. Currently, you can only complete the most simple transactions at automatically through number keying, but anything more complicated eventually goes to a human. However, if these next steps could easily be computerised, they would have been.

Voice recognition brings a whole host of problems over and above the requirement to computerise each new step in the process. These include different accents, colloquialisms, mispronunciations and misdescription of the requirements.

God knows, there is plenty of scope to improve the performance of call centers. It is frustrating to go through a series of lists (on reflection, voice recognition could accelerate this process) to eventually get through to a poorly trained, inexperienced staff member who doesn't understand what you're trying to ask him/her. As things stand, however, I think that all the issues that voice recognition bring are likely to add to these problems, rather than reduce them.

For what it's worth, I believe that many companies are aware that they are losing customers through the poor performance that they provide to people who phone their call centers. The priority will shift from cutting costs further to improving service. Better trained human intervention is the way forward for the next few years. Voice recognition will become the norm in due course but, I suspect, too late for Vocalis.

Regards.

King Rat