Place your Bets with VeCommerce and Aculab

Milton Keynes, UK - Four of the United Kingdom's leading betting agents have implemented a speech recognition application from VeCommerce, powered by Aculab's media processing resource cards. At The Races, Bet Direct, Blue Square and Ladbrokes were all experiencing double-digit year on year growth in the fixed odds betting market. This growth combined with favorable betting tax changes was making it increasingly difficult to handle the rise in call volume. This was a problem for horse racing in particular as volumes would peak 5-10 minutes before a race start time, leading to long phone queues and frequent abandonment of the call. The result was a loss in revenue for the betting agents. VeBet allows punters to place their bet in a natural, conversational way as they would to an operator. The speech recognition solution provides customers with an easy to use, reliable service that handles routine transactions. With the automated service, punters place their bets just before race time or the start of a match without having to queue for an operator or navigate through complicated menus. The system is also available 24 hours a day, So there is no risk of missing that potential big win due to not being able to speak to an operator. The first solution was deployed for Ladbrokes in 2002 for the Football World Cup and since then has expanded to take bets on greyhound and horse racing with the four bookmakers.