Automatic attendance

 Automatic attendance

Handling inbound calls is a critical function in all organizations. It represents the first level of contact and immediately impacts the customer satisfaction.
When inbound calls are not managed appropriately, customers who address specific questions may lose time being transferred from one department to another before getting to the right contact person.
In a large organization, it may look like trying to find someone in a labyrinth!

Because all inbound calls obviously need to be handled, attendance is consuming operator resources. As a result, large companies and administrations have started to rollout automatic attendance systems.
As opposed to the limited interactivity of the touch-tone based dialogs proposed by the first generation IVR systems, new speech technologies are allowing to efficiently achieve rapid connection between inbound callers and the appropriate department or person even when callers do not know the direct number to dial.

Thanks to its integrated speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities, coupled with database driven automated dialogs, VocaBase® enables to implement automatic attendance servers that actually assist customers in this tricky issue, at least as good as a well-trained live attendance operator.


 The solution

The VocaBase® auto attendant application template can use your existing company directory (MS Exchange, Lotus Notes, LDAP, or others) with all useful information about reachable persons (name, department, function, missions, skills, direct number, e-mail address...).

The directory may usefully be extended with the list of typical problems or questions frequently asked by callers, linked to the appropriate departments or people.

As opposed to the fixed hierarchical dialog trees of the traditional touch-tone based auto-attendants, VocaBase® leverages its integrated speech recognition capability to allow the caller to directly express the name of the requested person or department, which will spare a lot of time losses.
If the caller does not know any name to ask for, VocaBase® can prompt him with automated proposals, browsing the hierarchy of reachable services and person.

A dialog with VocaBase® will therefore follow the following steps :

  • Ask for the name of the person the caller wants to speak with. If the caller knows it, he is directly transferred to the right person.
  • Guide the caller through the database until a right person is found to address the expressed purpose of the call. VocaBase® may use the hierarchy of frequently asked questions to prompt the caller step by step.
  • Give optionally some information about the contact (direct number, e-mail address...).
  • Transfer the call the right contact, with a notification about the stated purpose of the call.
  • Schedule a call back if the contact is busy with other tasks.

 Benefits

An automated voice server for automatic attendance offers the following benefits :
  • Increase customer satisfaction by reducing waiting time, since the voice server is immediately available to handle their new calls in natural language.
  • This avoids time loss in the process of finding the right contacts.
  • Constant quality service, since the voice server is permanently aware of the latest changes in the "Who's who ?" and the "Who does what ?" lists of the company.
  • Operating cost reduction, as no additional live agents will be required to redirect the entering calls.
  • Complete multilingual service (foreign callers are guided through the database in their own language).
  • Dialogs are automatically adapted to any changes in the company organization and business described in the database.
  • Integration of Text-to-Speech avoids time and expenses allocated to voice recordings of messages and enables instantaneous updates of the system.

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