New AI speech technology for contact centres lands in ANZ

Convai has announced the launch of its new intelligent contact centre solution, designed to significantly reduce call times and improve customer experiences across Australia and New Zealand.

The contact centre enhancement, Oration, combines an artificial intelligence language interpreter with advanced speech recognition.

This enables contact centre management to create natural, automated conversations with callers that deliver quick, reliable outcomes for customers, and to manage peaks call periods more effectively.
 
Open speech navigation means customers can direct their call and reach the right outcome the first time by simply saying why they are calling in completely natural speech. The caller's response is interpreted to determine the underlying intent - enabling intelligent call options to be presented - while the full text is presented verbatim to agents, avoiding the need for the customers to repeat themselves when they reach the agent. These features ultimately reduce the average call time by 15-30 seconds.
 
Convai, part of PROBE Group, is a speech recognition provider with more than 20 years experience operating across Australia and New Zealand, offering a large portfolio of speech self-service applications. Over the next six months, the company will include these applications as further features to Oration, including biometric identification tools to quickly and securely verify customers without multiple questions or obtrusion, and sentiment analysis to determine customer mood to better equip agents to begin conversations.

PROBE Group CEO Andrew Hume said that Convai is the perfect solution for a complex and ever-changing industry.
 
"We understand the importance for businesses to create a natural, seamless experience when engaging their customers. Convai works to ensure that consumers aren't left with a poor first impression," he says.
 
"The system's incredible intelligence allows the real people in the contact centre to provide a more relevant, personal, considerate and engaging conversation with the customer right from the start.
 
"We've spent more than 20 years in this industry, and Oration is our response to what we've learned. Ultimately, Oration puts the control in the hands of the contact centre manager and will help businesses become comfortable with quality self-service customer integrations."
 
Advanced speech recognition and AI-driven call routing means the system can detect fast-breaking trends, such as an incident or product unavailability, understand customer intent and respond accordingly, handling large volumes of calls easily.
 
Oration provides a range of self-service options, such as store location or opening hours, to address intent immediately and reduce the need for agent involvement. Automated phone and SMS responses offers greater customer flexibility and self-service uptake.
 
"The Oration product has been purpose-designed to quickly and seamlessly plug into cloud platforms enabling it to make the most of the dramatic increase in cloud-based contact centre usage," says Hume.
 
Convai is used by contact centres throughout Australia and New Zealand including Westpac, Bank of New Zealand, Kiwi Bank and Inland Revenue.
 
This month, Vodafone NZ announced Vodafone Voice Concierge, an exclusive strategic partnership and integration with Convai to improve customer experience and efficiency of their contact centre offerings by implementing Oration.
 
"Having support from businesses like Vodafone NZ and Amazon Web Services is really a testament to the technology," says Hume.
 
"Personally, I think we will see AI technology take a front seat in the service industry in the future, as businesses ask themselves how they can improve their customers experience, while maintaining economic efficiency," he adds.