SpeechCycle Web Portal to Improve Caller Experience Management
SpeechCycle yesterday launched a Web-based portal to enable contact center managers to make dynamic changes to their interactive voice response (IVR) systems almost instantaneously.
Adding a message or prompt to a finished IVR can be a time-consuming process. If the IVR is updated and tuned by a vendor, a client must submit a request for a new message through that vendor, who will then either add the new message or show a member of the client’s tech team how to do so. With its new QuickTouch application, SpeechCycle promises to speed up IVR message changes.
As Roberto Pieraccini, SpeechCycle’s chief technology officer, explains, the QuickTouch program seeks to put the power back in its customers’ hands. "We provide the hooks in the application and give the customers the portal to position messages in certain parts of the application," he says.
The company also knew, however, that giving an untrained client access to a sea of complex code could be potentially damaging to the system. To remedy this problem, QuickTouch is formatted on to a Web-based portal, and allows users to simply type in the message they wish to convert into TTS format, or dictate the message as an audio file. By giving the customer a portal to the VoiceXML application, QuickTouch acts as a front-end portal that also keeps a company from changing vital coding.
To assure security, SpeechCycle also integrated strict access guidelines and records into QuickTouch. Employees can only gain entry to the portal by being granted permission, and once they log into the system, a record is made of any changes or activity. "[A company] can authorize people in their organization to do certain changes and not others," Pieraccini states. "A senior manager can do certain changes, but a junior employee cannot. It [QuickTouch] can track who is doing what, and make sure no one can break the application."
QuickTouch can, for example, program a prompt to be played in just one caller region or category. It also allows customer care professionals to proactively reach out to callers with new information, such as notification of an outage in a specified area, equipment or service updates, or promotion of a marketing program. It will help personalize each caller’s experience by enabling call centers to change voice prompts immediately using prerecorded audio or text-to-speech. A prompt library can be populated and browsed to manage prerecorded audio files. Text-to-speech allows audio messages to be delivered and tested before a change if a prerecorded audio file is not immediately available.
"QuickTouch innovatively works with our unique natural language voice to further immerse each caller in a personalized experience, enhancing our ability to automate the most complex calls at remarkable rates," Pieraccini says. "A QuickTouch management infrastructure makes distributed control a reality for enabling activity such as regionally customizing messages with confidence inspired by an intuitive Web interface."