Technology is changing the way people shop and the way people communicate with retail stores. Customers want 24 by 7 access to shopping, order status information, and account information. Speech is one of the enabling technologies that gives customers the anywhere, anytime access that they seek. All customers need is a telephone to shop, get order status, or access their account.
Many retail businesses are seeking solutions through technology: analyst firm IDC anticipates that IT spending in the retail industry alone will reach $27.6 billion by 2007. While much of this spending will be made to enhance store systems such as point-of-sale, strategically thinking retailers, hoteliers, and restaurateurs are using technologies such as speech to help carve out a competitive edge in their market by making themselves more responsive to the needs of their customers and guests. In addition to extending customer service and access, speech technology is an excellent way to help boost employee productivity and reduce call center and overall customer service expenses. It can also be integrated into an existing infrastructure, leveraging the technology investment that a company has already made.
Speech has already proven its value within store systems. For example, one national retail chain has implemented a voice commerce solution that allows customers to call the company’s toll-free number to buy products, determine product availability, obtain order status, and even locate stores. The system even has cross-sell, promotional, and up-sell capabilities. Results to date: calls handled through speech automated systems cost 87 percent less than calls handled by operators and orders placed through speech are, on average, larger than orders placed through human operators.
Speech can be used externally with customer self-service applications to promote customer loyalty and improve customer service. Speech applications can also be used internally to decrease operational costs and improve employee productivity.
| Application | Description | Average Savings/Benefit |
| Customer Account Information Access | Verify an account balance, check the date of last payment, change an address, or make credit card payments. Customers can safely and securely perform these functions at their convenience. | $5 to $15 savings per call. |
| Customer Satisfaction Survey | Improve survey results by giving customers an easy-to-use automated telephone survey. | Save thousands of dollars per survey. |
| Store Location Finder | Customers can locate the nearest store from anywhere at anytime. An automated application can determine where the customer is located, direct them to the nearest store, give store hours, and even advertise in-store specials. | Promote customer loyalty. |
| General Store Information | Avoid wasting the time of valuable call center agents by automating repetitive general information messages. | $5 to $15 savings per call. |
| Product Locator | For retailer with large stores, let customers pick up a courtesy phone to access a “product finder” application. Let your store personnel work on selling to customers instead of just giving directions. | Promote customer loyalty. |
| Troubleshooting Guides | Many retail products are complicated enough to cause the buyer to call with a question. An automated system can provide many of the answers to those questions. | $30 to $40 savings per call; improve customer service by providing immediate answers without waiting to speak to a live agent. |
| Delivery/Repair Status | Let the automated system answer questions about the time of a service appointment or the delivery status of a repair part. | Savings in the thousands of dollars as a result of decreased live operator support. |
| Gift Card Management | Gift card or promotion card management can often be handled automatically for a fraction of the cost of agent-assisted calls. | A large retailer reported savings in the thousands of dollars by automating special promotional campaign, including the verification of coupon numbers and a survey to measure the success of the campaign. |
| Payment | Many retailers have customers who owe small amounts. These amounts can be collected automatically by passing the customers to a payment application. | A current customer has reported collecting $50,000 per month from accounts that owe amounts too small to justify the cost of a call center agent. |
| Ordering and Order Status | Automating orders, especially from loyal repeat customers, is an application that offers great potential for retailers. Make it possible for your top customers to order whenever and where ever they want by just picking up the telephone. The automated system can identify the caller, access information from the caller’s profile, and lead them through a sale. | Promote customer loyalty and increase sales. |
| Employee or Customer PIN/Password Reset | Free your help desk personnel from the time-consuming chore of giving out temporary passwords by implementing a speech application that gives forgetful users a new password or PIN. | $20 savings per forgotten password by automating the resetting of passwords. |
| Vendor Accounts Payable | Retailers can allow their vendors to check account status by phone, which is helpful for vendor sales people on the road. Alerts for critical issues can also be automatically sent to vendor representatives on their cell phones. | Improve supplier relations. |
This is just a small sampling of the many applications in the retail industry that are possible with telephone self-service. Speech self-service systems improve customer service and customer satisfaction by empowering retailers to communicate with their customers 24 hour a day, seven day a week.
By addressing key business issues, Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) offers a number of benefits to any retail or hospitality business. It can help companies:
| • | Improve customer satisfaction - MSS enables customers to complete routine transactions when it fits into their busy lifestyles without waiting for an agent or for rigid business hours. Using MSS, retailers and hoteliers can extend their ASP.NET-based Web applications to the world’s 2.2 billion phones to reach today’s highly mobile customers. |
| • | Extend services easily - Speech technology allows companies to scale their information and customer service offerings to meet the demands of new markets or extend existing services to new markets. For instance, by deploying speech-enabled applications designed for Canadian French or U.S. Spanish speaking customers, retailers can better address the needs of a variety of customers. |
To better understand how speech self-service applications can help lower costs and improve customer satisfaction, visit us in the main Microsoft Pavilion #500 in the expo hall during the National Retail Federation tradeshow from Jan. 15–18, 2006. In addition, attend the February 8 webinar focusing on “Speech Self-Service Applications Retail Customers Love to Use”. To register for the webinar and obtain more information, go to http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032288700&Culture=en-US.
Author: Randy Henry, Director of Alliances & Partnerships, Gold Systems