25th October 2006

London, UK – October 25th, 2006 - Fluency Voice Technology, (www.fluencyvoice.com) the speech recognition application company, has today announced that 87% of consumers who participated in a retail-focused trial of speech recognition technology confirmed that they enjoyed the experience and are ready to use it again. The trial was undertaken as part of the Consumers Perception of Speech Recognition Survey conducted in August by Fluency Voice Technology.

The survey explores the emerging and future trends of speech technology and consumer needs.  In the retail specific section participants were asked their preferences for using speech for transactions namely:-

• Order a catalogue or brochure
• Order a product
• Check order status
• Payment processing using credit/debit card
• Finding nearest store

The results showed that consumers are most happy to use the speech system to order catalogues (86%), check order status (82%), find the nearest shop (84%) and even order products (77%).

The survey also revealed a positive endorsement to using a speech system as an alternative to the Internet for purchasing items (58%) amongst the interviewees and this is even stronger if a better deal can be obtained (66%). The overall first choice preference (67%) for retail communications is a live agent although a speech system is preferred (32%) significantly over a touch-tone system (1%).

Speech technology has been adopted by a wide range of sectors including utilities, transport, travel, public sector and financial services and this has served to expose speech self-service to millions of the UK public. Many retail companies, large and small, are also successful and committed users of speech systems and this is now one of the fastest growing areas for speech adoption.  Driven by an increase in home shopping usage, retailers have identified speech recognition as a key technology to improve the customer experience and their competitive edge. Providing a 24 x 7 service, a convenient and fast way to track orders, place orders, check order status etc all serve to improve the consumer experience and boost retention and orders.

Notable converts to speech recognition include The Arcadia Group which has invested in speech recognition technology to improve customer service by accelerating their store location service and automatically routing their callers to their favourite and nearest clothes shop. JD Williams’ automated speech system gives the caller their account balance on receipt of spoken account number and also takes payments and Dixons has just implemented its speech system for call routing.

Philip Padfield is CEO of Fluency Voice and comments, “Retail is one of the fastest growing sectors for adoption of speech technology this year.  We are in discussion with a significant number of catalogue and retail companies who have identified that value that speech recognition will deliver to their business in service level improvements and are only too aware of how demanding the customer can be when service is not responsive enough.”  Phil continues, “The genuinely reassuring news from this survey is that the results highlight a year on year increase in acceptance, usage and positive perception of speech recognition amongst consumers.  It is positive user feedback like this that ultimately influences adoption rates and confirms to retailers that speech is a communications platform that delivers real benefit to customers.”

To download a free copy of the full survey results, please visit www.fluencyvoice.com.
 

About Fluency Voice Technology

Fluency Voice Technology is a leading provider of packaged speech recognition applications for use in call centres. Our solutions enable enterprises to significantly reduce costs and enhance customer service by automating much of the high volume call centre activities.

Key sectors for which Fluency has developed applications are Financial Services, Travel & Transport, Utilities, Public Sector, Telecoms and Retail. Fluency has always been at the forefront of speech recognition and has changed the way in which businesses use speech by introducing configurable packaged applications. Fluency has offices in the UK and US.

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