If history is any guide, as many as 88,000 callers will be ringing the toll-free hotlines at 1-800-Flowers this Valentine’s Day to make sure their chocolate and roses arrived on time. Managing call volumes that high is a challenge for any business, but in the gift and sentiment industry, where each transaction carries a high emotional attachment for the customer, efficient call turnaround is especially critical. Still, Lou Orsi, the retailer’s director of vendor relations and strategic projects, isn’t worried. He’s got a secret weapon.

Thanks to the retailer’s customized, speech-enabled IVR (interactive voice response) application, customers simply speak their order numbers into the phone, follow the prompts, and receive fully automated status updates.

According to Orsi, handling simple status calls in such an efficient way has not only allowed 1-800-Flowers to increase its order volume, it has also improved customer satisfaction. Just a few years ago, customers would be on the phone with a live agent at 1-800-Flowers for an average of four to five minutes per call. Today that number is down to a little more than one minute per call, “What it does for us as a business is it allows our folks to focus on … sales calls or other customer service-oriented calls that need more personal attention,” he says.

A unique confluence of technological improvements in recent years is allowing a growing number of companies to realize the benefits of speech technologies for customer and employee self-service. Improvement in speech recognition, the advent of VoIP, and the emergence of sophisticated “voice portals,” in contrast to the inherent limitations of touch-tone menu options, are leading to wholly automated IVR apps with which customers can conduct end-to-end business transactions, such as ordering tickets or making reservations.

 

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“We believe [speech] is ready for successful deployment and offering clear, tangible benefits today,” says Gartner analyst Bern Elliot. Meanwhile, the industry outlook is promising. According to Daniel Hong of the industry analysis firm Datamonitor, the global market for speech-enabled IVR is worth about $1 billion and is expected to double by 2009.

Heeding the call

Companies have long tried to reduce their dependency on live call-center representatives by deploying IVR systems based on touch-tone menus. But as the number of options grew unwieldy, these systems became cumbersome and increased the likelihood that customers would “tune out” and seek help from a live operator (see “Customers Don’t Have to Hate It,” page 32).

On the other hand, although perhaps awkward for inexperienced callers, interfaces that recognize speech are more flexible and easier to navigate.

Consider the number of options a customer might have to navigate on a consumer appliance manufacturer’s service line, for example. Just giving the customer the option to say “refrigerator” and be directed to the appropriate department can reduce call times significantly.

“The companies that we see adopting speech, as opposed to Touch-Tone, are companies that really care about their brand and really care about customer loyalty,” says Azita Martin, vice president of marketing at speech vendor TuVox. According to Martin, speech-enabled interfaces often appear first in highly competitive markets, where customer service becomes a key differentiator.

Data entry is another application in which speech far outshines touch-tone IVR. For example, United Airlines recently unveiled a completely automated system for ordering tickets on the phone. Such an application would have been impossible to deploy using touch-tone dialing alone.