Virtual banking agents enable Standard Life to automate much of its call center operations. In addition, they allow the bank’s customers to speak normally when making customer service calls, eliminating the need for them to listen to a continuous loop of menu choices when using traditional automated method.
Around 20% of financial services call centers have already deployed speech recognition and the number is set to soar in 2006 with the arrival of off-the-shelf packaged solutions such as the VSA Suite, which has already proven successful within the banking sector.
Customers warm to the virtual bank agents and see the huge benefits these systems offer over traditional touchtone menu choices, commented Laura Thornton, Standard Life press officer. To date, 56% of all calls are serviced without any agent intervention and 90% of the identification and verification is done by the system. We are currently using the virtual bank agents on our savings products and are planning a roll out to our mortgage customers in 2006.
