SA`s contact centre industry is poised to learn from a successful Australian speech technology, with the first local implementation of this technology due before year-end.
Speaking at the Dimension Data CIS Forum, held earlier this week in Swakopmund, Namibia, a representative of Vodafone Australia told delegates how the company`s investment in speech self-service had added immense value to its brand.
Adam Spence, a service strategy consultant at Vodafone, was discussing the group`s development of a virtual persona - known as `Lara` - to fill the gap between traditional touchtone interactive voice response (IVR) and the actual contact centre.
"Lara was designed to make simple tasks like prepaid registration a friendlier and more comfortable experience for users, while at the same time freeing up agents to deal with more complex problems," he says.
"She has been designed to be an ambassador for our key brand values and we developed her persona to ensure she was representative of the majority of our customers, giving her a young and hip personality."
He says the technology is designed to mimic human conversation and achieve a casual language standard, so it is informal and uses slang words and colloquialisms, making it a much friendlier service.
"We developed Lara`s persona to such an extent, using input from our contact centre staff and the branding team, that she has a background - she `lives` in Sydney, `drives` a VW Beetle and has a tattoo, for example - and a personality, to make her seem more real to the user."
From Lara to Lerato
According to DiData`s national practice manager, Mike Fairon, this type of service is not so much about the technology as it is about adoption.
"The technology works, but people still have to be educated as to its value to an organisation, although DiData is definitely geared up to exploit the opportunities that exist in the local market," he says.
"In SA, we have already seen certain organisations that have grasped the concept and are seriously looking at utilising the technology, while there are others out there who just do not get it at all."
He says DiData is in the process of developing its own version of `Lara` - perhaps `Lerato` locally - and will follow the path set by Vodafone in Australia, which tested the concept on its internal switchboard first, before taking it live to customers.
"We will test our version within DiData SA first, eating our own dog food, so to speak, and the technology should be ready before the end of this year," says Fairon.
The last word, however, goes to Spence: "Now that we know it works, we are looking to differentiate `Lara` for different markets, namely chirpy and informal for the youth market and more professional for the business market.
"And we know it works well, because we have already received several e-mails from customers who want to ask Lara out on a date!"
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