Keys to Being a Successful Speech Application Provider
Since Nuance Speech Attendant reached end-of-life in 2022, Parlance has filled the gap, not only supporting but improving performance for the many organizations who needed an effective speech-enabled solution to automate call navigation.
To build a successful telephony-based speech application, an organization must follow the Deming Cycle for continuous improvement. This cycle goes as follows:
Plan
•Design speech applications based on the problems that need to be solved and the goals that need to be reached
•Understand who the users of the application will be and what they will be looking to accomplish
•Gather the data required to satisfy users’ needs
•Create a dialog with the application that will maximize success for the caller
Do
•Build the applications
•Create the applications following a design that optimizes caller participation and success
•Enable the infrastructure to support the application
Check
•Analyze caller success with the applications
•Determine/verify the efficacy of the applications and help improve them
•Support the applications for their life cycle
Act
•Be proactive in maintaining a customer/partner relationship
•Respond to changes in caller success
•Provide recommendations for additional caller and agent benefits
Parlance completes this process for each and every customer because every customer is unique and has a different set of business requirements. Even health systems have drastic variations from one hospital to another. Our motto for hospitals is, “If you’ve seen one hospital…you’ve seen one hospital.”
Taking the time to analyze the issues, finding the areas where using speech for automation will be most effective, and looking for the data that will support the application when it’s in use, are only the beginning. “Doing” and “Checking, which include building and analyzing the application, are iterative. Caller behavior is the main indicator of your speech application’s success and is the main basis for making changes to optimize the application. Even in the age of machine learning, Parlance still listens to tens of thousands of caller utterances annually to help understand how our applications are working and to make recommendations for improvement. The best way to improve caller experience and achieve better business optimization with Parlance isn’t by taking the “set-it-and-forget-it” approach, since data, business, and caller needs are constantly changing. Contact centers in any industry must adapt to these changes to help both callers and the bottom line.
Finally, including customers as partners in development and optimization creates long-term, lasting relationships. You can never guarantee the absence of bugs or problems. The only thing you can guarantee is that when problems do arise, you will work to get them resolved. Your customers must have confidence that you will work quickly to resolve issues and always be there to assist for the life of the application.
About Parlance
For over 25 years, Parlance has been at the forefront of speech-enabled technologies, delivering our applications as a fully managed service. Our technology solutions accelerate access to care for over a thousand hospitals, clinics, higher education institutions, and Fortune 500 enterprises across the United States. Consumers easily connect to the people, information, and services they need, no matter the volume of demand. Parlance provides not only industry-leading technology, but a team of tenured experts who make your system work, take ownership of day-to-day performance, and guarantee ROI.
By Mindy Garber
