Voice Partners Gives Consumer Brands a Voice Over the Phone

Experts in entertainment, advertising and speech recognition have joined forces to assist companies in delivering new conversational, voice-based services that allow consumers to interact directly with their brand over the phone. By improving the quality of the over-the-phone experience for the consumer, companies are generating revenue, increasing loyalty and bettering customer satisfaction.

Founders Melissa Dougherty and Wally Brill are leading companies on the road to better customer relations and brand-building. "Research shows that a majority of a consumer's contact with a company is over the phone-increasingly, through automated services," said Ms. Dougherty. "It's essential for that contact to be a positive experience for the consumer."

Research shows that 82 percent of consumers prefer using conversational voice systems to touch-tone, human operators and web-based systems. People automatically associate characteristics with the voices that they speak to, and these voices end up being tied to the brand. Because companies have not put the time, money and research into the voice-based systems that they have put into other aspects of branding, over-the-phone systems can have a negative impact.

Brill adds, "The telephone has been a wasted channel of brand communication. How is it possible that our most sophisticated brand marketers are still relying on crude touch-tone interfaces when there is the possibility of a rich immersive audio experience?"