Dial Tone 2.0: The Phone Talks Back

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    Certainly all of us would gleefully dispense with corporate America's worst form of automation, those very unhelpful help lines. In that woeful customer experience, McCue and others hear an enormous opportunity. Most of today's touch-tone call centers are built on expensive proprietary equipment that can't talk to a company's other systems. That's why no matter how often you punch in your account number, the agent you finally speak to will invariably ask for it again.

    Automating a telephone transaction can save lots of dough--as much as 75% off the $5-to-$15 cost of dealing with each call. But, as Paula Skokowski, vice president of marketing at voice-solutions-provider General Magic, notes, "You never see the savings, because everyone is pressing zero-pound" to get to a human. By integrating these newfangled, intelligent virtual-call centers with the rest of a company's Net infrastructure, and then hosting them on their own networks, Tellme, BeVocal and other application service providers hope to make effective customer self-service a reality. One example: a San Francisco chiropractor is using a system from BeVocal and Xtime, a scheduling software vendor, to let patients book appointments 24/7.

    At the same time, companies can use voice applications to reach out to consumers. Tellme and Shoptalk are helping Jiffy Lube send automated phone alerts to customers when it's time for an oil change, and CNet Auctions is working with NotifyMe Networks to call users if their online bid has been trumped--and let them raise it without firing up a modem.

    Innovators in the airline, financial and shipping industries have already started using advanced voice applications. Charles Schwab customers, who previously could say a company name or symbol to get a quote, can now make trades or transfer funds in the same way. And Home Shopping Network has 700,000 customers who use their voice as an ID.

    This all sounds great, but as often happens with Silicon Valley's Next Big Thing, something may get lost in the translation. Voice-recognition technology is far from perfect. Background noise can still cause problems, and the phone is really suited for only short bulletins. The software that converts text into speech, though improving, can often sound robotic. Many observers, however, think that as wireless data get better, the phone will allow callers to ask for information with their voices but see it with their own eyes. If that's the case, Mike McCue might be making the right call.

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