Speech Self-Service Boosts Contact Center Returns

Contact centers that add speech self-service capabilities to existing IVR technology lower their call abandonment rates according to a survey of more than 300 companies in the new report, “Speech Self Service: Say ‘Yes’ to Reduced Costs and Improve Customer Satisfaction,” by market research firm AberdeenGroup.

Of those firms that implemented speech self-service technology, 95 percent improved customer satisfaction, 92 percent improved first contact resolution rates and 67 percent lowered their cost per contact, according to Aberdeen.

“A well-designed speech self-service application does a number of things,” Aberdeen found. “It empowers the consumer to resolve issues on their own. Consumers can interact with the contact center at any time and place. [The application] also reduces the number of agents required to support the customers and frees up existing agents for more complex tasks.”

According to Aberdeen, 68 percent of best-in-class contact centers have or plan in the next two years to have speech self-service capability. Forty-five percent of best-in-class firms are likely to use speech self-service as a competitive advantage.

However, implementing speech self-service is only a means to an end, the report added. Even though the best contact centers are likely to achieve an advantage by implementing speech self-service first, it won’t be too long before “average” and laggard contact centers add the technology as well.

So best in class contact centers will use the technology to improve customer satisfaction and first contact resolution rate in order to maintain their competitive edge, according to the report.

The best contact centers are 1.7 times more likely than average contact centers to use analytics to track performance across all channels, the report added. Nearly 60 percent of the best contact centers receive real-time updates on information, compared to only one third of average call centers and 18 percent of industry laggards.

Some of this analytic information is used to train contact center agents, enabling them to provide better customer service and improve first call resolution performance, according to Aberdeen.

Aberdeen recommends that contact centers increase their investment in processes infrastructure, implement speech self-service as well as underlying technologies such as natural language understanding, and add speech synthesis and voice browser call control.