The National Australia Bank says the deployment of new and sophisticated speech recognition technology, to be bought from Telstra and VeCommerce, will allow its staff to spend more time focussing on the needs of the bank’s customers.

Telstra enterprise & government executive director, Paul Geason, says the company led the sale and implementation of VeConnect as part of the bank’s new customer service initiative, which sees the launch of a single telephone number (136 NAB) to cover all of the bank’s customer enquiries.
 
“Through the use of VeConnect, an advanced natural language speech recognition application from VeCommerce, callers to NAB will be routed to more than 150 destinations within the bank by simply stating their request.

“Telstra has long been an advocate of speech recognition technology to enhance customer service and boost business productivity. We look forward to playing a part in the improved service for NAB people and customers through the Telstra and VeCommerce solution.”

According to Paul Magee, managing director of VeCommerce, “the power and flexibility of the company’s VeConnect application” would mean an enhanced customer experience for NAB’s callers with a faster and more efficient processing and resolution of enquiries.

NAB  general manager, direct, retail financial services, Ann-Marie Chamberlain  said customer service excellence was crucial to the NAB and it was imperative that the introduction of the new technology improved the bank’s ability to meet the high customer service standards it had set for itself.

“By introducing this sophisticated speech recognition technology we will be able to spend more time focussing on the needs of our customers,” she said, adding that the NAB had chosen to partner with Telstra and VeCommerce as a result of their “proven track record in delivering speech recognition solutions.”

Telstra is managing the coordination and deployment of the solution that integrates into NAB’s existing telephony infrastructure and utilises VeCommerce’s Australian financial services statistical language model. Telstra will also provide first level support for the solution.