VideoMoreover, voice-recognition systems enable companies to consolidate 1-800 numbers. Reportedly, Bank of America consolidated more than 4,000 such numbers into one number simply by switching to voice-activated customer service. Says Bill Meisel, president of TMA Associates, a speech-technology consultancy in Tarzana, California: "That would never have been possible with Touch-Tone menus."
Further, many voice-activated customer-service packages include simplified menu trees and plenty of exit points for users. Thus, customers tend to need less time on the phone. In fact, Lynda Smith, vice president and chief marketing officer at technology provider Nuance Communications Inc., based in Menlo Park, California, claims the average length of a voice-activated self-service call is about 20 seconds. By comparison, customer calls to customer reps typically last nearly a minute and a half.
This is not to say that speech-recognition systems are perfect. It will take some time before the search engines driving these systems can actually mimic real conversations. And the duration of agent-based calls actually goes up once a voice-automated service is put in place.
Still, with 90 percent of consumers saying they prefer speech-recognition systems to Touch-Tone systems, it won't be long before the Julies of the world become familiar voices in the 1-800 world.
Karen J. Bannan is a freelance writer based in Commack, New York.
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