Automating telephone based services
Nowadays, telephone based business activities have become a popular way of performing business transactions. In a few years, almost every service business will need call centres to handle a significant number of calls from customers. The need for automatic speech recognition and understanding would definitely standardise the procedures involved and ease the problem of handling routine information provision and transactions with greater speed, while utilising the minimum of resources. The ACCESS project has succeeded in developing a full dialogue system for the automation of telephone call centres with full integration into an existing system. The system has the potential to manage a very large number of calls. As well as speech, the technology is also capable of recognising text documents received by post or facsimile and handling written information too. Equipped with such automation capabilities, call centres are expected to provide efficient services at any time over the telephone. The ACCESS system was initially tested by the insurance industry to conduct automated contracting and help desk procedures in order to process customer claims and enquiries. The focus was placed not only on optimising the call centre, but also on reducing the cost of recording data from customers' forms by extracting the valuable information directly via an automated dialogue. From conducting simple customer surveys to handling more complex issues like vehicle damage reports, the ACCESS system is able to respond effectively and efficiently to spontaneous dialogue cases and speech patterns of non-professional users. The software application package may be used as a whole for integration within existing call centre installations or in separate software modules, such as the element for speech comprehension or the dialogue design tools (with which they will be able to design their own applications). The system can be exploited to establish added value for call centre solutions and new business areas. Telesales, telemarketing, traditional information provision services, customer relations, help desk functions, and most other applications in Electronic Business can adopt ACCESS technology for telephone applications creating new business opportunities for Europe.
