|
For all those people who have had bitter experiences with Interactive Voice
Response (IVR), regarding an enquiry or when filing complaints, there is hope.
There are times where you need to wait for a few minutes to get your message
across. But things can now become better with voice-based IVR solution. Instead
of dialing a number, one just needs to speak to get instant results. Voice-based
IVRs act according to the voice commands and produces an output accordingly.
There are currently a lot of solutions that are available in the voice front
such as transcription tools, BPO solutions and the speech-enabled IVRs.
Market for voice solutions
The speech or voice-based solutions have been in India since 2000, but it is
only now that it is gaining popularity. The adoption of voice-based solutions
has been primarily in the Value Added Segment (VAS) by the telcos in areas such
as ringtones, hearing horoscopes, subscription services, which are largely done
using speech recognition. Telcos have been using the speech tools since long
because it saves time. The time taken in the voice-based IVRs is less than the
traditional touch tone IVRs and allows one to reach everywhere throughout India.
It has also been reaching the rural masses for the personal infotainment.
“Consumers don't want to key in numbers or letters any more and with the
adoption of mobile phones, there is an increasing need for voice-based
solutions,” said R Raghavan, Director-Marketing, Bay Talkitec.
According to Sunny Rao, GM-ASEAN and India, Nuance Communications, the
awareness of voice-based solutions is picking up in the enterprise sector, after
the usage has been saturated in the telecom vertical. Nuance is a global company
that offers the technology platform to most of the speech recognition players in
India.
 |
| The time taken in the
voice-based IVRs is less than the traditional touch tone IVRs and allows one
to reach everywhere |
“In case of enterprise verticals such as customer care or IT, the dominance
today has been on looking out in establishing the base for servicing customers
in tier-A cities where the speech has been always seen and used as a cost
reduction phenomenon,” informed Rao. On being asked the reason for the growth in
enterprise sector he cited that enterprises are going towards a hyper growth
form. “Verticals such as telcos and banks have been adding subscribers in large
numbers every month. When the industry is in hyper growth stage, it would like
to move beyond providing basic functions.With their client base getting
saturated in the cities, companies are looking at rural areas as the growth
verticals. The only way through which those companies can reach out to the
masses is by automation and that is possible only if it's on a voice-based
platform. One can't ask the customer to keep on dialing the numbers,” Rao said.
The awareness of voice-based solutions has been gaining momentum in the past
two years. “With the entry of new players, a lot of education is happening in
this area. The decision for the adoption of this solution is being taken much
faster. In the next couple of years, the adoption would be four times more than
it is now,” claimed C Mohan Ram, MD-LatticeBridge Infotech, Tenet Group, IIT-Madras.
Growth verticals
Telecom has been the legacy vertical where voice-based solutions have been
extensively used and followed by the customer servicing centers. Apart from
customer servicing and telecom, banking, HR and financial services are verticals
where it can be effectively used. Rao informed that banks are using their
solution for their pilot projects with their direct
sales agents.
Transportation, hospitals are the other major areas where speech solutions
could be very handy. LatticeBridge Infotech has done a pilot project for the
Southern Railway enquiry, where passenger can call the server and mention the
name of the train and get the necessary details. The call gets completed within
few seconds. Nuance Technologies collected different speech data on the basis
of dialect and language across the country.
Scope for SIs
This particular domain has no proper channel model, despite the fact that it
has been in the industry for around eight years. “Initially we tried dealing
with channel partners and that was a few years ago, when this industry hadn't
matured enough. We didn't succeed so we stopped within a few months. First the
industry has to mature and only then will the solutions get a good response from
customers,” claimed Ram of LatticeBridge. He felt that it is slightly difficult
to communicate the benefits of voice-based solutions among the system
integrators (SI) as it is necessary to first convince the principals to take up
this solution, as they are the ones who deploy it along with the SI. “First we
need to convince the principals of the SI, as they play a vital role in the
projects that are taken up by the SI. We are in the process of convincing the
principals to some extent,” Ram averred.
On the other hand Rao felt that SI can also decide to sell the solutions to
their clients independently. “We are working on the partnership model with
vendors such as Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and also few SIs such as LatticeBridge,
Baytalkitec. Other SIs and service providers can also be a party to our
company,” Rao informed.
There are few factors like costs that force a few enterprises to delay their
decision in going for voice-based solutions. “Yes, it's quite expensive and if
an enterprise looks at this technology in a long-term perspective, this
definitely has a huge RoI factor. Only those who are going to invest in
voice-based technology will survive the competition of retaining their customer
base,” claimed Rao.
NR SETHURAMAN
sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
| 
