Citation
(2002), "Voice recognition", Work Study, Vol. 51 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2002.07951aab.008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited
Voice recognition
Voice recognition
Computer voice technologies are now so advanced, reliable and user-friendly that they are set to cause a paradigm shift in the contact centre industry. That is according to Mike Cleugh, technology director of Dimension Data Customer Contact Solutions. He says that technologies such as voice recognition, text-to-speech and voice-over IP are poised to make self-service "a lot more viable". Quoting figures from a recent report from sister company Merchants, Cleugh said that 47 percent of call centres were planning to implement voice technology and 28 percent were already using it. "Three quarters of call centres will be using it within a year" he said.
"I have been tracking it for ten years and it has always been promised. But now it is about to be the new reality of call centres." He said it is not one technology or one vendor but together a group of technologies that can be integrated to provide a talking customer interactive computer system. He says that he does not believe that it will do away with the human agent. "New technologies do not do away with old channels but supplement them. It will free agents up from mundane tasks, provide cost savings and improve service levels."
He says that this issue is not overstated in the same ways as, he believes, the role of the Internet in its promise to kill off the human agent. "It is poised to make a real and dramatic impact," he says. "The key difference is that only 35 percent of people have access to the Internet, while 99 percent have access to a phone. Also with a phone they know how to use it and are comfortable doing so."
He reported that companies are already undertaking pilots including at least one of the big four banks but "without making a big song and dance". He added:
In the next five years, contact centres, as we know them, will be decimated by the arrival of this technology, which by that time will be low cost and ubiquitous.