OutRight Insurance Broker Selects Speech Technology from IBM

ARMONK, N.Y. - The OutRight Company, a company providing insurance to brokers and corporate clients, deployed speech recognition technologies from IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Fluency in its call centers.

IBM WebSphere® Voice Server (WVS) and IBM partner Fluency's packaged application, the Virtual Speech Agent (VSA) suite™, support OutRight's new speech-enabled customer services.

OutRight is deploying the speech recognition solution in its Stoke-on-Trent call center. OutRight also plans to deploy speech applications for identification and verification of customers and a travel insurance quick quote facility over the coming months.

OutRight offers a range of insurance products including travel, car, home and motorcycle insurance.  With the new speech-enabled 'Router,' part of Fluency's VSA application suite, OutRght's automated system prompts callers to state what they're calling about.  The speech application routes the calls. 

"We proactively chose to test speech recognition technologies in our business and the IBM WebSphere Voice Server/Fluency VSA suite gave us the ability to do this simply and quickly and to learn from the experience," said Ray Westwick, head of business partnerships at OutRight. 

Westwick added, "Standing still just isn't an option at OutRight.  We see the efficiency and customer service improvements that we can achieve by using a virtual agent to handle simple repeatable tasks.  Customers now demand 24/7 self service and that is exactly what we can provide with the IBM WebSphere Voice Server - Fluency VSA Suite solution.  The opportunity to improve service levels, reduce costs and maintain an all-important competitive edge is boosted significantly with the application of speech recognition across our business."

"We operate in a fast moving and highly competitive marketplace and are passionate about the role that technology can play in increasing the speed and efficiency of our service while also improving customer experience," said Westwick. "Speech recognition, when used appropriately, can deliver immense benefit to our organization in terms of reduced overhead, better response times and an optimized and competitively superior service.  This impacts customer service and retention but significantly benefits regulated industries such as ours with improved compliance."

Fluency's VSA Suite is made up of a series of applications, each of which can work independently, but can also be deployed together throughout an enterprise depending on specific business needs.  These options provided OutRight a selection of applications to automate their call center workflows and to change and maintain their system internally.