People like talking to a machine: survey shows

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 August 2007 07:48

Your IT - Home IT

One third of respondents to a survey carried out for speech recognition specialist Nuance say they would rather talk to a speech recognition system than a live operator, and when the alternative is being placed on hold, the figure rises to 85 percent.

The survey, of 262 Australian end users was undertaken in conjunction with one of 111 contact centre decision-makers for voice self-service transactions and contact centre automation specialist Information Technologies Australia (iTa). Both surveys were conducted by callcentres.net.

iTa CEO, Nick Buckle, said says the aim of the two surveys was to determine the current status of the market; specifically the use of speech recognition technology. "We discovered that speech recognition is now an established technology in contact centres, however we were surprised that some outdated views of the technology and the benefits still remain," he said.

"With changing customer demographics and higher expectations from callers for an enhanced customer experience, the research actually indicates speech recognition is the preferred self-service channel, both over the web as well as over a live agent amongst 30 percent of respondents."

The Nuance end user survey found that "when customers have the choice to use a speech system or talk to a live agent, 30 percent of callers prefer the speech channel over an agent, with less than half of people preferring to talk to a customer service representative. If faced with waiting on hold prior to speaking to a customer service representative, 85 percent of customers would prefer to use a self-service speech recognition option."