Running Your Speech Solutions Clean in Lean Times

If you want to get your management team to commit to a speech solution in the midst of a recession, you’re going to have to have a clear “automation roadmap,” says Harkishin Nachnani, manager of voice user interface design and speech science for Convergys.

During a breakout session on “High-Value Solutions on a Low Budget” at this year’s SpeechTEK conference, Nachnani points to recent findings from Datamonitor that show enterprise investment in information technology to be stagnating or receding. When companies are cash-strapped, big capital investment is a hard sell, he says, despite the fact that “we know speech saves money.”

For Nachnani, making that difficult sale relies in part on making a strong business case with demonstrated value. Nachnani lays out that value in what he calls “the automation roadmap,” a graph broken down into various phases of implementation and spread along two axes that show savings over time and automation percentage rates. In his roadmap, the savings from each phase pays for the next, allowing the enterprise to continue expanding automation over time without accelerating investment.

In the first phase of the map, Nachnani focuses on “no brainer” applications—those that are low-complexity and have high and quick return on investment.

In normal economic conditions “most companies start out with transactional applications,” he says, but adds that, “during tough times you don’t have to start with transactional, you can start with pre-built, off-the-shelf applications that allow for early gains.” Successive gains are more modest and focus on high-complexity/high-savings applications, followed by low-complexity/low-savings applications.

Nachnani also recommends that enterprises look into hosted models for initial savings and try to negotiate with vendors, explaining that many vendors are currently proving very flexible with their pricing plans and are often willing to enter into risk-reward contracts.

Dan Reed, corporate vice president for Voxify, who also spoke at the session, was equally sober in his presentation. He began by laying out the economic climate in a PowerPoint presentation lush with explosions and siren sound effects. Painting a bleak, if also comic, picture with slides that read “CONTACT CENTER BUDGETS ARE EXPLODING” and “REVENUES ARE DECLINING,” he focused his attention on getting the most value from a solution as the recession takes it toll.

Reed identified “the top ten speech crimes” perpetrated in the midst of the downturn. Among them were “ransom note user interfaces”—interfaces that resemble filmic ransom notes (a clutter of different typefaces, colors, etc.) in their patchwork; post-deployment review (Reed says that enterprises should be able to review solutions in early testing); glacial reactive responses rather than proactive responses; and the inability to deliver a cross-channel experience.