Providing a self-service facility to clients can make or break a business, or at least damage its reputation among customers.
If the service requires an endless amount of punching in of membership, telephone, cellphone, credit card and policy numbers, for example, a client could easily become frustrated with it - especially if it is costing him the call time, or even if it is offered on a share-call basis.
Discovery Health has overcome these problems through the use of three technologies: VoiceGenie`s VoiceXML Platform; SpeechWorks Open Speech Recogniser; and SpeechWorks Speechify text-to-speech engine, all represented locally by Intelleca Voice & Mobile.
Members of the medical aid company who are also Vitality members qualify for 15% discount on all Vodacom and MTN prepaid cards - and they can easily recharge their phone time through the integrated voice recognition system implemented for Discovery by Intelleca Voice and Mobile.
Trent Rossini, CIO of Discovery Health, says: "Vitality gives members access to facilities they would not otherwise have, and then builds on that by rewarding them for healthy behaviour. One of those is cellphone airtime at preferential rates."
Vitality members have jumped at the chance to reap those rewards. Brian Klompas, community manager for Vitality HealthStar, says new registrations since the initiative was launched last year have averaged 1 400 per month, with 9 000 prepaid units being bought each month.
"The process is very efficient," he says. A member simply calls a toll-free number, and if they have previously registered with Discovery, either online, by phone or any other means, most of their details (such as cellphone and bank account numbers) will already be on the system. This reduces the amount of time they have to spend entering details, either by keypad or voice.
Rossini says: "We needed to deliver a service that was oriented around low cost and convenience. The other projects we were delivering across Discovery World were not far-reaching enough to get to our broader market. It was a logical extension to expand what we were already offering over the Internet to a voice channel to meet our objective of being self-service-oriented."
Members are greeted by name when they call in, with separate numbers for MTN and Vodacom subscribers. The entire transaction can be completed in under a minute at no cost to the member.
Klompas says: "Vitality members can register for the service, change their details, or buy airtime. They don`t have to go to any menus. Via the VoiceXML system, they can ask for what they want and interrupt the process at any time.
Once the purchase is complete, the Vodacom card will load automatically. MTN subscribers have to dial 555 and punch in the pin that has been SMSed to them. "The transaction is confirmed with an SMS advising the member they have bought airtime, giving them the pin number as a reference. This is a security measure, to alert the member in case someone else has accessed the facility without their knowledge."
In terms of return on investment, Discovery anticipates payback within a year, due to improved efficiencies. Klompas says: "The self-service facility brings us cost savings from a call centre perspective. For us to deliver such a facility through any other mechanism, the economics would not be viable. We are not earning any money from the system, so if we incurred a large admin cost, we would not be able to offer it."
And as is the case when no complaints are received, the assumption is that silence is consent. "Our agents are not finding themselves in a situation where disgruntled members are calling in," says Klompas.
Rossini says one of the reasons for the success of the system is it is always available, 24x7x365.
Mike Renzon, MD of Intelleca Voice & Mobile in South Africa, says the speech systems support "barge-in", the ability to interrupt at any time. "This, together with `word-spotting`, the identification of words in a phrase, provides a natural and friendly interface. These features result in a far more pleasant and conversational user experience, resulting in greater acceptance of automated services."
No special skills are required to voice-enable Web resources with VoiceXML, as it uses the voice extension to XML without requiring any changes to back-end interfaces, he says.
"VoiceXML-based technologies support full Web-based functionality, including filling in forms, reading out tables, recording voice responses, filling in fields for user identification, and choosing from drop-down menus. This range of functionality allows for the building of far more powerful systems than IVR-based systems," Renzon says.
Rossini adds: "With far fewer enquiries for call centre staff to deal with, they have more time to respond to member queries, complaints and requests. Of all the airtime sales recorded in the first month of launching the service, 75% were bought through the VoiceXML solution, 24% online, and 1% through the call centre. We are experiencing the same call volumes during the week as on weekends, so people are definitely taking advantage of the 24-hour availability."
Renzon notes: "Aside from the savings on staff and resources, Discovery also stands to benefit from a customer service point of view, as the VoiceXML gateway is simple to use and user-friendly. Unlike cumbersome touch-tone solutions which often frustrate callers, speech recognition offers callers a natural conversational interface while fulfilling Discovery`s requirement for an automated solution."
The VoiceGenie VoiceXML gateway, a Linux-based voice Web solution, complies with all aspects of the VoiceXML 2.0 standard and incorporates mature integration of automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech and telephony signalling.
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