Visual Self Service Storms Into the 3G Mobile Arena
SpeechStorm today extended its IVVO phone self-service suite with the launch of a new range of Visual Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications aimed at transforming the way consumers and providers interact.
“What the introduction of Visual IVR does is open up a wider spectrum to the end callers and the end users of how you’re giving them options of how they may interact with the company,” says Oliver Lennon, CEO at UK-based SpeechStorm. “And from the company’s perspective, they have one consolidated platform on which they can deploy these different services and different modalities of interacting.”
“So it’s really giving the organizations the ability to allow their customers to interact with them in the modality that’s most convenient and easy,” he adds.
Via a simple video call on a 3G mobile phone, callers will access visual representations of business and leisure transactions—everything from transferring money to booking movie tickets to checking sports scores.
“[It’s] a very rich representation of the transaction that you want to do,” Lennon says. “A good analogy that I often refer to is having an ATM in your hand…it’s a very similar experience. So, you have a menu set of options, you use the keypad on your phone to simply select which options you want to do…”
According to Lennon and SpeechStorm, the new service will benefit both callers and providers. For the caller, the benefits include a visual, intuitive interface, faster service, and reduced wait times. For providers, the service can provide new ways to generate revenue, increased agent effectiveness and better customer service.
“From the user perspective, the speed is significantly increased in terms of how quickly they can complete a transaction,” Lennon says. “The usability is significantly enhanced because of that direct feedback if you input your data…so from a user experience perspective it’s a very natural approach and you’re not waiting until the end of the of the transaction or part way through to get a confirmation that you’ve entered the right data.”
Lennon also said that Visual IVR—which is handset independent and requires no downloads to users’ mobile devices—also provides for increased security, particularly in financial and banking transactions.
“As a call finishes, there’s no data left on the handset," he says. "That data actually completely finishes and disappears whenever a call ends.”
Further adding to data protection, "The data is encrypted in that video call, so we don’t have to do any special encryption," Lennon explains. "So looking at it from the security perspective, there’s much more in-built security in the transfer protocols that we’re using.”
Lennon says the new Visual IVR service will be going live in the next few weeks. “As far as we are aware, this is probably one of the first deployments anywhere with this type of solution,” he says. “So it is very early days for a lot of this technology and these types of solutions.”