Business executives across industries are finding that voice
commerce—the use of speech recognition, voice authentication, and
text-to-speech to support commercial activity—has a particularly strong
business case. It can dramatically reduce call-center operating costs while at
the same time improving customer experience, even help build brand image.
Moreover, according to a recent Accenture study based on interviews with 840
executives in 25 countries, the next three years will see a five-fold increase
in the adoption of automated voice commerce technologies
Among the findings, the study reveals a high level of
interest in the adoption of voice commerce to improve business productivity and
beat the impact of the current global economic recession. Although only six
percent of the businesses interviewed for the study report that voice commerce
is providing important opportunities to their organization today, 30 percent
expect it to be doing so within the next three years.
In the U.S, the proportion of businesses taking advantage of
voice commerce will reach 45 percent (up from 15 percent today), compared to 23
percent in Europe and Japan (up from just two to three percent today). Voice
commerce will be pursued vigorously, particularly by businesses in
consumer-conscious sectors, such as financial services, telecom, and government
A Strong Business Case Business support for voice commerce is no surprise: it cuts
costs and improves service. Adding it to current sales and service channels can
slash the cost of incoming service calls by a whopping 60 to 90 percent. Plus,
by reducing the customer wait time on the phone, and the time it takes to
process calls, the technology can also enhance service levels. Office Depot,
for example, has voice enabled the ordering and payment function of its
15,000-item product catalog. By placing the voice-enabled application on top of
its existing web and IT infrastructure the company automated typical voice
transactions, reporting a return on its investment within just three weeks.
Voice commerce can also be used to generate new sources of
revenue. A number of mobile operators have already developed voice portals,
including Omitel in Italy, Telenor in Norway and Sprint in the U.S. These
portals give access to a range of services, such as voice-dialing, directory
services, the latest news, weather and stock prices, just by speaking. Portals
partly depend on the generation of revenues from new services, but much is also
achieved simply through better branding, improved customer loyalty and
encouraging customers to increase their airtime with the mobile operator.
Strategic Challenges Although the technology for voice commerce has improved
significantly over the past three years, it is still best suited to
transactions that are simple, standard and frequent. As a result, early
deployments tend to concentrate on transactions such as basic account
inquiries, placing orders and account payments. Once these simpler voice
commerce systems are in place, more complex transactions can then be added.
For example, Sprint PCS introduced its voice-activated
dialing network service in 2000 allowing subscribers to upload their contact
list to the Sprint network and then dial any of those contacts simply by
pressing the “*” and “talk” keys and speaking the contact’s name. As a
follow-on application, in late 2001 Sprint introduced a natural language
customer service system that allows customers to naturally respond to an
open-ended “how may I help you?” prompt, understanding and processing spoken
inquiries such as “uh, yea, I’m uh looking for one of your stores.”
A common challenge for businesses is customer acceptance of
voice commerce applications. Customer resistance is strongest where voice
commerce services cannot recognize speech accurately enough. And building and
tuning the necessary language databases to support high levels of voice
recognition accuracy can be a lengthy process. Hence, some businesses are
deploying voice commerce capabilities gradually, giving themselves time to
improve its accuracy and allowing customers time to become comfortable with the
new service channel.
Although more complex systems take longer to implement and
refine, the time and cost required is falling rapidly, thanks to better
development tools, expanded language databases and the growing use of
application service providers (ASPs). The voice-verification service company
Buytel is using the ASP model to deliver faster and cheaper services. Companies
employing the service include Telia, a Swedish telecom operator that uses it
for identifying users logging on to sensitive teleconferences, and the Allied
Irish Bank, which uses it to identify customers over the phone.
Companies such as Tellme, Bevocal, and HeyAnita have
provided standard voice processing platforms to enterprises and carriers for
over 2 years. These platforms reduce the costs of entry for businesses seeking
to take advantage of voice commerce. To enable network-based voice services and
meet the expected demand from large enterprises for carrier grade quality and
scalability, telecom carriers are likely to soon extend their network services
with standard platforms for voice applications. When this happens, the cost of
entry into voice-enabled commerce for many businesses will be further reduced
and carriers will have yet another value added service to add to their
portfolios.
Global Opportunity The United States, with its large population and common
language, has become the global leader in voice commerce. Thirty-nine percent
of executives in Accenture’s latest survey expect the US to remain the leader
over the next three years. However, the technology is not restricted to the US.
Voice technologies are benefiting companies around the world. Global customers
are clamoring for innovative, useful applications. At the same time vendors are
making the investment necessary to develop those innovative applications. For
example, today applications can support a variety of different languages. In
fact, some can recognize more than 20 unique languages.
This multi-lingual capability offers new opportunities, as
illustrated by a recent initiative from UBS, the world’s largest global asset
manager. Using voice-recognition technology, UBS allows customers to check
account balances, make transactions, transfer funds and receive other
information. Although the service is initially available only in Swiss-accented
German, UBS will soon add French, Italian and English. Customers using the
service will be able to speak in any supported language at any time during the
call and have their voices recognized.
While UBS is certainly a robust example of voice commerce,
most businesses are deploying the technology gradually, allowing the necessary
language databases to be developed and refined, and giving customers the chance
to get accustomed to the new way of doing business. Fortunately, voice-commerce
technologies are well suited to this strategy. By taking this approach now,
some businesses are familiarizing themselves with the challenges of voice
commerce, taking steps towards improving their productivity, growing revenues
and building a longer-term competitive advantage in a rapidly expanding field.
About the authors: Traci D. Egly is a
partner in the Accenture Technology Solutions group for Communications and High
Tech, Pragnesh Shah is an experienced manager in the Accenture Communications
and High Tech market unit, focusing on wireless, mcommerce and voice solutions,
and Andrew W. Sinclair is a senior manager in the Accenture Strategy &
Business Architecture group for Communications and High Tech.
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