Humans comfortable with machines

Humans are becoming more comfortable interacting with voice self-service solutions, and this channel is being viewed more favourably than before by US and UK consumers, according to a new report published by BT and Nortel, says TMCnet.

The report, Fragvergence: Changing Consumer Attitudes to Diverse Contact Channels, was based on a quantitative survey of 1 018 US and UK consumers, and a qualitative set of in-depth interviews with consumers.

This research revealed 69% of Americans and 66% of Britons would prefer that companies use advanced voice recognition in order to reduce their costs.

Sabio, a contact centre consultancy services company, has extended its Hybrid Agent Framework suite of voice self-service solutions, with the integration of Voice Verification software from Nuance, states CRM Today.

The new integration solution enables close inter-working between live agents and IVR applications, accelerating customer adoption of Voice Verification and allowing organisations to benefit from the improved service and security offered by voice biometrics.

Sabio's approach helps organisations, particularly in the financial services sector, to directly address growing customer concerns around identity fraud.

Fifth Third Bank, a large financial institution in the Midwest, with over $111 billion in assets, has chosen CGI's Web Promises solution to integrate collections self-service to its enterprise collections systems, including to CGI's CACS Enterprise Collections and Recovery Solution, reports Fineextra.

CGI's Web Promises enables organisations to put their collections activities on the Web quickly and cost-effectively, and to start collecting more money now, without adding additional staff or overhead.

Timelier, proactive treatment and resolution of customer delinquency via new channels with minimal collector involvement allows Fifth Third staff to focus on customers requiring collector assistance.