CORDIS proporciona enlaces a los documentos públicos y las publicaciones de los proyectos de los programas marco HORIZONTE.
Los enlaces a los documentos y las publicaciones de los proyectos del Séptimo Programa Marco, así como los enlaces a algunos tipos de resultados específicos, como conjuntos de datos y «software», se obtienen dinámicamente de OpenAIRE .
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What traveller hasn't found themselves needing up-to-the-minute information on the latest ferry, rail or flight timetables? And what travel company hasn't found itself wishing it could provide that information over the telephone at any time of day or night in any language? Most have, but until now such services have generally been restricted by the need for human operators to respond to customers. Now, however, the successful completion of the IST-funded research project E2M has brought the information accessibility needs of travellers and the information deliverability requirements of travel companies a step closer to being met.
(http://www.e2m-project.org/)
Twenty-four hours a day, 365-days a year automated multilingual access to information, reservations services and booking data over the telephone has become a viable possibility for the travel sector and other industries with the conclusion of the E2M project by a consortium of Spanish and Greek companies.
Employing existing technologies to create a Spoken Language Dialogue System (SLDS) that can be integrated into e-business, E2M offers customers access to information in potentially any language through a combination of artificial intelligence and pre-recorded messages to interpret questions and provide answers.
"The incorporation of voice input/output to e-commerce applications is a highly innovative feature," says Gema Lopez of Indra Sistemas, the coordinating partner of the E2M project, "and the tourist sector is a target market for making use of this technology." Notes Jose Luis Garcia of ITC, "for us, in the Canary Islands, tourism is by far the most important industry, supporting most of the economy of the islands." Combined, Spain and Greece represent more than 15 percent of southern Europe's market share of tourism arrivals, according to the World Tourism Organisation, generating annual revenues in excess of 30 billion and 9 billion euro, respectively. Across Europe approximately 12 percent the call centre market is dedicated to the travel and tourism sector.
In addition to Indra Sistemas, ferry companies Fred Olsen of Spain and Hellas Flying Dolphins of Greece are the testing partners of the E2M project, which was developed with technology partners KNOWLEDGE of Greece, Wire Communication Lab, University of Patras, Greece, and the Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias (ITC). Especially during the summer months Hellas Flying Dolphins experienced difficulties in fielding the large number of calls received, so they sought to automate its busy call centre and approached KNOWLEDGE for a solution, joining the E2M consortium. Fred Olsen had similar problems at their call centre. 80 percent of their calls did not lead to a reservation. The E2M voice portal system was seen as a mean to optimise their call centre to give a better customer response and attendance to those who wanted to make a reservation.
Customers voice their support
Having initially been presented and tested on the public at Madrid's FITUR travel and tourism trade fair in February, trials of the E2M system have finished on Fred Olsen ferries in the Canary Islands and the reservation system of Hellas Flying Dolphins in Greece. The results of the trials, which used two linguistic databases to run two multilingual-multimodal applications operating in Greek and Spanish, show not only a high rate of successful transactions taking place but also a broad level of acceptance by the public. Recognition rates ran as high as 90 percent with a similar percentage of users successfully completing tasks as diverse as obtaining ferry routes and departure times or, in the case of the Fred Olsen trials, reserving and booking journeys.
Most significantly for companies seeking to incorporate an automated call centre, the E2M results show a high level of customer satisfaction even among callers who did not expect to interact with an automated system. Over 70 percent of customers surveyed after interacting said they would use the system on a daily basis, exemplified by more than half of all callers to Hellas Flying Dolphins' reservation centre intentionally opting to use the automated system even when asked if they would prefer to talk to a human operator. This is especially important, the evaluation report of the E2M project notes, as with customers confident about using the automated speech interface no human interaction is required, freeing operators to handle more complex enquiries with potentially greater value-added content. In turn, the permanent operability of the system removes the time constraints of human service representatives, allowing more calls to be fielded and therefore increasing transactions. "I would estimate that companies could see a 10 percent to 15 percent increase in calls through the use of this system," Garcia says, "probably resulting in a similar increase in turnover." Hellas Flying Dolphins says its growth estimate is around 20 percent.
A success in any language:
Built around Phillips' SpeechMania spoken language recognition system, two multilingual converters, a database interface and company databases, the system has proven capable of recognising a pre-stored language independent of regional accents or grammatical mistakes, understanding a query, retrieving the required data and responding to a customer. The immediate responses of the system through pre-recorded messages allows a customer to interact over the telephone as if they were holding a natural conversation with a human operator. Although tested in Spanish and Greek, new languages can be added to the system to meet users' requirements in a modular way through the addition of new lexicons.
"Users [of this system] will improve their service to customers, and therefore their competitiveness," Gema Lopez noted. Indeed, by using E2M, companies will be able to provide real-time responses to customers at any time of day and every day of the year with the benefit of lower costs from the need for fewer human agents and equipment while potentially increasing transactions and therefore turnover. This is seen as especially important in the highly competitive travel sector where operating margins are generally narrow.
Both Hellas Flying Dolphins and Fred Olsen, are looking to exploit the system further with the former planning to fully automate its call centre to field an estimated 50,000 calls a month over the summer season and the latter interested in adding English to its information and reservation system.
Though the project focused on the tourism industry the system could easily be applied to other sectors requiring instant, global, multilingual interactions with clients, making E2M a strategic innovation in customer service for the business community.
Promoted by: IST Results Service
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