Hoping to catch up with airlines and with railroads overseas, Amtrak plans to switch to interactive speech recognition technology this fall.
The move will not only save time for customers, it will save money for the railroad – almost two-thirds of its teleservices costs – which it needs to survive. Amtrak now receives more than $400 million in annual federal subsidies, and it has until 2003 to meet a Congressional mandate to become financially self-sufficient.
All three of Amtrak’s customer interaction centers will be equipped with technology to phase out the touch-tone telephone system, which prompts callers to press buttons on keypads to hear recorded information.
Eventually, all travelers who call 1-800-USA-Rail will be connected to a talking database before being given the option of speaking with a live customer service agent.
The new system, which uses artificial intelligence, will be installed probably first at Amtrak’s Philadelphia center and later at centers in Chicago and Riverside, CA.
Railroads in Germany and Australia are already using speech recognition technology for teleservices inquires and providing information to travelers using kiosks.
Amtrak is now developing scripts and conversation models for the talking database to handle simple calls concerning train status, freeing up time for live customer service agents to help customers with more complicated inquiries, and who want to make reservations.
“We’re going to test its performance and capacity and measure differences in customer interaction,” says Rosylyn Roberson, manager of telephony technology at Amtrak. “We anticipate a partial deployment in late fall.”
The speech recognition technology will be linked to the same database Amtrak uses to disseminate information through its Web site (www.amtrak.com).
Amtrak is acquiring the IVR technology from Boston based SpeechWorks, International, Inc. to help support a major new marketing initiative to increase ridership, reduce customer service costs and compete more like an airline. U.S. airlines working with SpeechWorks have reduced the amount of time customers spend talking with live phone agents about 30%, according Steve Chambers, vice president of worldwide marketing at SpeechWorks.
Chambers estimates Amtrak will improve customer service satisfaction by 35% with the new system, and reduce teleservices costs by 65%.
The national railroad carried 21.5 million passengers and generated $1.8 billion in revenues in its 1999 fiscal year. Amtrak’s passenger growth strategy is based on promoting feeder routes to regional transportation hubs with connections to multiple destinations, like airlines do.
By using speech recognition, Amtrak expects to reduce teleservices costs by doubling or tripling the number of customers it serves with automated teleservices without transferring them to a customer service agent, Roberson says.
Only 20% of Amtrak’s 32 million inbound callers annually now receive all the information they need without transferring the call to speak with a customer service agent, she says. The present touch-tone system frustrates many customers, especially those with cell phones. “It’s difficult to use because of the large number of prompts and easy for people to get lost in the system, which leads people to hang up or press zero to speak with an agent,” Roberson says.
Amtrak will be able process customers faster with speech recognition because fewer people will need to speak with agents. In addition, on-hold times will be reduced, says Chambers.
Initially speech recognition will be used only to provide inbound callers with information about train departure and arrival status. Applications will later be expanded to provide train schedules, fare information and ultimately allow inbound callers to speak with Amtrak’s database to make and pay for train reservations.
Before Amtrak introduces speech recognition it plans to roll out a new frequent traveler marketing promotion this summer. Details about the campaign have yet to be released but a spokesperson says it will be structured like similar point-based airline marketing programs.
After Amtrak deploys speech recognition nationwide it will decide whether to take the next step and use the human-sounding voice of its database to conversationally pitch targeted promotions to inbound callers, using a new form of interactive teleservices media known as speech spots. With speech spots the talking database would use targeted scripts to cross sell or upsell offers by working them into conversations with inbound callers. At present Amtrak is focusing on installing speech recognition technology, which will give it the capacity to do this.
“I’d really be surprised if they don’t look into because it would be a way to get the system to pay for itself,” says Chambers.
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