By Jo Best, 25 November 2003 15:10
NEWS LloydsTSB is finding that when it comes to banking, customers like talking to robots rather than humans, with the bank today announcing it has handled over 70 million calls with interactive voice response technology (IVR).
With volumes of around 70,000 calls per day, the system - from Nortel Networks - is proving a hit with banking customers. But it's a far cry from the bad old days of 'if you require this service, press one now'. Today's IVR can allow users to speak in sentences, recognising speech to transfer balances, make payments even authorise overdrafts.
IVR technology is increasingly becoming an everyday part of call centres. It's made its way into around 63 per cent of call centres, according to the Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2003 a huge jump from 1999, when just seven per cent had the technology in place.
Part of the appeal for users is convenience and part is the privacy. Peter Littlewood, senior manager of IVR service development at LloydsTSB told silicon.com that often customers are happier asking an automated voice for an overdraft than a real human being.
"It's good for those customers who are still a little bit worried about talking to their bank manger," he said, adding the bank has in-person support for those who would rather talk to a 'real' call centre agent.
The LloydsTSB/Nortel IVR is designed to take into account a user's familiarity with it, asking different questions depending on how well the customer knows the system eventually ending up with the customer able to override all the prompts and get the system to complete the transaction they want.
According to Littlewood, the move towards automation is a response towards the sheer speed at which virtual banking took off "phone banking has grown at such a rate we couldn't build call centres fast enough," he said - as well as a general response to customer demand for quicker and less complex transactions.
There's also the obvious cost benefit, with Dimension Data recently estimating IVR can save a contact centre around 30-40 per cent.
The 11-year-old Nortel/LloydsTSB partnership has no plans to sit back now, seeing a bright future for the technology.
The two companies are currently undertaking trials of using speech as a biometric verifying a customer's identity by the unique features of their voice. The trials should be completed in two weeks and the bank is firmly convinced that the technology will be rolled out.
And there's still room for development, according to Lloyds TSB and Nortel. "I see a move towards convergence with the web with speech driving internet banking," Littlewood said. "There may well come a day when you can sit in front of a virtual bank, maybe talking to an avatar of an agent."
Andy Dennahy, Nortel Networks EMEA's director of self-service solutions, agrees. As well as focusing on delivering the technology in new ways over mobile devices, like PDAs, the automated voices themselves will be updated. "We're developing new levels of naturalness in speech," he said.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. James P
I'm a Lloyds customer and I can tell you that their IVR service is bloody annoying and wastes so much time with a badly thought out navigation process. Doesn't work very well on noisy London streets either which typically is when I have a few minutes to spare between meetings.
If I could get to a voice operator instead I would - quickly!
2. anonymous
I have been banking with Lloyds for 15 years, the last 3 years with both business and personal accounts. Service overall has deteriorated to the most dire state over the last 3 years. I do not use the IVR systems because they are slow and inflexible and I can perform these transactions faster on the web . These systems are fine for standard trnsactions transferring funds, making payments etc but when you need real help they have not chanelled any of the "savings" into better customer service, indeed any service at all. Credit where credit is due but the reported "success" of these systems is a smokescreen to wider customer service problems at the bank which has prevailed for 3/4 years. I believe that they have to provide these services to be viable, competitive retail banking institutions anyway, focussing on them to the detriment of their ability to service customers in the long run will not succeed.
3. anonymous
I have the misfortune to have to access our company bank account information via the LloydsTSB call centre and it is awful. It has every feature that gives call centres a bad name.
However, I still believe that it might be possible for them to create an IVR system that would deliver a worse level of service.
I suggest that the article paints rather a rosy picture, to say the least.
4. Brian Smart
I'd agree with IVR for different reasons: It's late at night, you need to get some transactions sorted, you don't feel like talking to anyone and you don't even want to pick up the phone handset. You press buttons and listen to the response on your phone speaker. So I wouldn't want to speak, even to an IVR system, but I agree with the rest. Who knows what sort of irresponsible plonker you might be discussing your finances with? Which, of course, is why Internet banking is the best of all - and there's no language barrier trying to understand regional accents!
5. anonymous
As a Lloyds TSB customer I would like to say that I am not a fan of thier IVR system. In my opinion its clunky and takes to long to execute instructions particularly if your on the move
6. anonymous
Lloyds call centre may not be brilliant, but it is miles better than when I used to call my bank branch.
My branch (Sutton, Surrey) took the call quickly, then always forgot to carry out my request; the call center answers more slowly, but the job gets done!
7. anonymous
That's if you can get through to an agent in the first place instead of the normal "Press one for New Accounts, Two for .. " and then entering your 16 digit access code .. when driving!