In today’s rapidly changing business environment, contact center companies are constantly seeking improved means of serving their customers efficiently and speedily. One technology proving extremely useful is Automatic Speech Recognition, or ASR. \
You see it in action when you call your bank and an automated system understands your spoken request like “check my account balance. You may have heard of it, but what is it, and how can it benefit your contact center? Let’s take a close look at this handy tool simply.
What is ASR?
Automatic Speech Recognition, or ASR, is a technology that allows computers to recognize and understand human spoken language. Think of it as teaching a computer to “listen” to what people say and figure out the meaning. This technology is utilized in many things we encounter daily, from voice assistants on our phones that respond to our queries to automated systems that guide us when we call a business for assistance.
For contact centers, ASR is becoming an increasingly significant means of making their operations smoother and offering good service to customers.
How ASR Works: A More Detailed Look
Although it may feel like magic, ASR is accomplished through a few simple, logical steps:
- Recording the Sound: When a customer speaks, their voice sound is fed into the computer via something like a contact center agent’s headset or the customer’s phone’s microphone. This sound is then translated into a digital version, a numerical language the computer can interpret and analyze.
- Analysis of the Sound: After getting the sound in a digital format, the computer analyzes it by breaking it into extremely small fragments. It examines various aspects of the sound carefully, like its loudness, its pitch (high or low), and the particular sounds used to create the words being said. This is where something referred to as an acoustic model is crucial. This model is a kind of dictionary of all the root sounds in a language, and it assists the computer in identifying these root sounds in the customer’s words.
- Meaning Understanding: Having the individual sounds alone isn’t sufficient for the computer to comprehend what the customer is speaking. It must also know what the words mean when combined in a sentence. This is where the language model is used. The language model analyzes the chain of words it believes were spoken by the customer and applies its knowledge of grammar and popular phrases to make an educated guess about which word was probably spoken in that situation. For instance, if someone says, “I want to see the sea,” the language model makes the computer realize it didn’t mean “I want to see the C” because “sea” is a better word choice in that sentence.
Why is ASR So Important for Today’s Contact Centers?
Today’s customers want quick and convenient assistance. Contact centers constantly seek ways to address a high volume of calls without keeping customers waiting long. ASR assists in this in several ways:
- Quicker Assistance to Customers: ASR can render assistance faster. For instance, if a customer calls to inquire about their account balance, an ASR system would grasp this request quickly and provide the information automatically, without needing to transfer them to a human representative.
- Help is Always Available: ASR-based systems can operate 24/7. This implies customers can receive assistance or information even when the contact center’s human resources aren’t on duty, like at nights or weekends.
- More Precise Written Records: When customer calls are automatically converted to text, it means there’s a very precise document of what was stated. That’s much better than relying on a person to take notes during a call because humans may miss important information or mishear something.
How ASR Adds Value to Contact Centers
Utilizing ASR in contact centers produces numerous advantages that can enhance their operations and customer satisfaction:
- Saves Human Agent Time: ASR can automatically write what the customer is saying on a call. This means human agents don’t need to spend as much time typing notes and can instead use that time listening intently to the customer and assisting them with resolving their issue.
- Aids in Better Understanding Customers: Once customer interactions are converted to text, analyzing many calls is significantly easier. Contact centers can search for frequently bothering customer issues, learn their most frequent discussions, and get a better understanding of their needs and experiences.
- Makes Things Run More Efficiently: ASR can help route calls to the appropriate individual or department faster. For example, if the customer indicates they are calling about a billing matter, the ASR system receives this and automatically routes the call to the billing department, saving time for both the customer and the contact center. ASR can also automatically resolve basic and frequent questions, allowing human agents to focus on more complicated issues.
- Assists in Monitoring the Quality of Service: Contact center managers can use ASR transcripts to check how agents are responding to calls. This helps them ensure agents are doing things correctly, offering quality customer service, and adhering to company policies.
- Assists in Training New Agents: When new agents join a contact center, they can learn a great deal by going through transcripts of good customer calls. This can show them how experienced agents tackle various scenarios, what vocabulary they employ, and how they successfully solve customer issues.
- Reduces Waiting Times for Customers: ASR-based systems can enable customers to receive the information they need or perform simple operations without waiting for a human agent to become available. For instance, a customer can receive information about their order or pay a bill simply by talking to an ASR system.
- Enhances the Overall Customer Experience: By speeding up the help process, making it more accurate and convenient, ASR can result in a significantly improved customer experience, leaving customers more satisfied with the company.
- Can Save the Company Money: By automating parts of the processes typically done by human agents, like answering routine questions or passing calls, contact centers can hope to save money on staffing, leading to cost benefits.
How ASR is Really Implemented in Contact Centers
ASR is employed in numerous practical ways in contact centers to enhance their operations:
- Automated Phone Systems (IVR): If you’ve ever called a company and heard a voice telling you to say what you’re looking for, you’ve likely interacted with an IVR system powered by ASR. These systems use ASR to understand your spoken requests and direct your call to the appropriate department or provide you with automated information.
- Analyzing Recordings of Customer Calls: ASR can be employed by contact centers to automatically convert recordings of customer calls into written text. This helps them quickly search through the transcripts for certain keywords, determine repetitive issues customers are encountering, or locate useful information regarding customer opinions and experiences.
- Assisting Agents on Calls: Some sophisticated systems employ ASR to monitor the interaction between a customer and a live agent in real-time. If it recognizes what the customer is trying to convey, the system can then assist the agent with useful information, such as answers to frequently asked questions, tips on how to address the customer’s issue, or applicable information from the company’s knowledge base.
- Understanding Customer Emotions: Sometimes, ASR technology can even assist in understanding a customer’s emotional state by analyzing the words used and their tone of voice. This can assist agents in responding more effectively to customers who may be frustrated or upset.
Things to Consider When Choosing ASR Tools
If your contact center is considering implementing ASR, there are several key things to take into account when selecting the appropriate tools:
- How Accurate Is It?: Crucially, the ASR software must accurately interpret what customers are saying. If it makes many errors in recording speech, it may cause misunderstanding, frustrated customers, and more time wasted on each call. An effective ASR system must work with various accents and interpret speech even with background noise.
- How Quick Is It?: The program should be capable of converting speech into text quickly, preferably in real-time while the customer is speaking. Latency might cause the customer to feel a bit awkward, and the speed of assisting them decreases. Quick processing ensures a flowing and seamless conversation.
- How Well Does It Integrate with Other Systems?: The ASR tool should easily integrate with the other systems your contact center employs, including your customer relationship management (CRM) system and your telephone system. This prevents the need for agents to switch between multiple programs, saving time and limiting the possibility of errors, making the entire workflow more integrated and seamless.
- How Much Does It Cost and Can It Scale with Us?: You should select a tool you can afford within your current budget. Consider whether the price is worth the value it will bring. Also, consider if the software can handle an increasing volume of calls and new languages as your business grows in the future. This is referred to as scalability.
- Can It Take Large Numbers of Calls Simultaneously?: The ASR system should be highly reliable and scalable to handle numerous simultaneous calls, particularly during peak seasons when traffic is huge. Even when facing high call volumes, the system must run smoothly without causing glitches or slowing down. That way, customers will still receive quality services regardless of peak season.
Conclusion
Automatic Speech Recognition is an extremely valuable technology for today’s contact centers. It makes things more efficient, saves time and money, and ultimately results in happier customers. Learning about what ASR is and how it functions will show you why it’s such a vital tool for companies that are interested in great customer service.ย ย
Ready to make your contact center smarter and work more smoothly? Mihup.ai has easy-to-use ASR solutions that can help you understand your customers better, automate tasks, and make your customers happier. Visit the Mihup.ai website today to learn how!
