Spinvox demos tech

Embattled voice-to-text provider Spinvox demonstrated its technology to counter claims that its reliance on call centres was hampering its ability to grow, states the Guardian.

The Spinvox chief information officer, Rob Wheatley, led journalists through a detailed explanation of the technology not only behind the voice recognition but also an application called Tenzing that speeds the transcription by operators at call centres.

Company representatives refused to clarify what percentage of calls were sent to human operators.

Patrick Byrne, MD of Glasgow-based outbound call centre operator Intellis, says cost savings of up to 63% and substantially enhanced service levels can be had through researching the market and switching telecoms providers, reports Call Centre Helper.

“Our business is coping well with the economic downturn but I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the inability of the big telecoms players to understand us or even tailor their services to our needs,” Byrne says.

He says the company was clearly being taken for granted since nobody at its supplier seemed to care about the company and that it was paying way over the odds.

More than 1 500 workers, earning £7 (R93) an hour, have been hastily hired at the UK's 19 call centres, dishing out antiviral drugs to people with symptoms of swine flu, some without any training, reports The Mirror.

The hotline, which has cost £2.5 million to set up, is meant to provide reassurance and, more importantly, help diagnose whether members of the public have swine flu, with access to patients' most confidential medical details.

Yet a whistleblower claims many staff have no medical knowledge, have had little or no training and have been hired in such a rush that the main qualification for being taken on was the ability to start the next day.