A.M. Leonard adds speech recognition technology
SUDDEN SPIKES IN INBOUND CALL VOLUME no longer wreak havoc for teleservices operations at gardening tool catalog A.M. Leonard Inc. The problem was resolved with speech recognition technology.
After three years of generating telephone catalog requests from 30- and 60-second TV spots, the Piqua, OH-based company realized the growing difficulty and cost of accurately projecting call volume, according to Bill Holt, operations manager at the cataloger’s customer interaction center.
Leonard’s TV spots, which run largely on Home & Garden Television, triggered high call abandonment rates as would-be customers were left waiting on hold and frustrated.
About twice daily Leonard endured seeming corporate panic attacks when TV spots aired. The volume of inbound calls often more than quadrupled for 30 to 45 minutes, swamping its 32-station center. Leonard used to pull all available employees away from their regular work to help teleservices agents answer surges in call volume.
Overall, there was no way for Leonard to efficiently schedule staff for peaks in call volume. Outsourcing overflow calls to a teleservices agency provided only partial relief.
The company resolved this problem earlier this year when it began using speech recognition devices to automate inbound catalog-request calls. Leonard tapped Campbell, CA-based Voci Speech to deploy speech recognition technology in January.
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