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Voxify's Retail Incursion
Voxify explains their move into retail, both seasonal and year-round.
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
Yesterday this reporter wrote an article on speech recognition vendors Voxify, and their announcement that PhotoTLC will put Voxify's Conversation Engine technology "at the disposal of" PhotoTLC's more than 15,000 outlets at photo retail centers across the country.
This constitutes what Voxify officials characterize as an "aggressive push" into the retail sector, heretofore a sector not particularly targeted by speech recognition, being more widely used in the travel and hospitality industries.
In a study last year, commissioned by Menlo Park, Calif.-based Nuance and conducted by Harris Interactive, it was reported by industry observer Jennifer O'Herron that "61 percent of speech users were highly satisfied with their most recent speech encounters, 56 percent of users indicated that they would definitely or probably use the system again, while only seven percent said they wouldn't use speech rec again."
So it's getting better, which it had to do before it even thought about cracking the highly customer service-centric retail market. Because not only are companies using it to save money -- hiring fewer agents -- but to improve consistency of answers across all calls as well, according to Voxify founder and VP of Products Amit Desai.
Desai talked a couple weeks ago about how eliminating the need for seasonal workers was one of the major selling points of speech recognition technology as far as companies are concerned, but how other considerations, such as consistency are important as well. This reporter conducted a mini-interview follow-up with Voxify's Director of Marketing, Hollis Chin to find out a bit more about their foray into retail:
With PhotoTLC you're hitting the seasonal retail market, obviously. What other steps do you have planned in your "aggressive" marketing strategy?
We have plans to run campaigns for every segment. Retailers that are part of the Christmas holiday cycle were the focus of a Christmas in July campaign. We're planning a campaign for January 2006 that will focus on retailers that have any spikes in their call volumes – Super Bowl, Mother's Day, etc.
Are you ramping up for the seasonal bumps in the travel and hospitality industries as well?
Yes, in fact, we are in the midst of a campaign to travel and hospitality right now. The travel industry gets busy in spring and summer. Now is the time for travel companies to implement technology, in advance of their busy period. The window of opportunity for travel companies to implement is between now and February.
Is your move into retail, at this point, confined to seasonal, or do you anticipate "year-round" work?
We see retailers that are not part of the traditional Christmas holiday cycle. For example, retailers selling office supplies and equipment do not have the strong seasonal spikes. But these retailers receive millions of calls on a regular basis and need speech applications.
Are you creating special agents for retail, or tweaking your current ones?
Many of the Voxify Automated Agents for retail are existing agents that have been tailored specially for retail needs. A new one for retail is the Lead Capture Agent that captures the name and address of direct response leads. There is very high demand for this capability from retailers. We are able to offer this to other industries but retailers have traditionally run very large direct response programs.
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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
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