Telephone voice assistants, the revolution in customer relations

The era of the DTMF voice server is coming to an end. Too cumbersome, too inflexible and, above all, no longer in tune with the expectations of callers who have mastered the art of bypassing navigation menus better than anyone else, touch-tone voice servers are destined to disappear from the world of customer relations. Thanks to recent innovations in speech recognition and natural language understanding, voice assistants are overtaking DTMF. The big names in telephone customer relations rely on these assistants to communicate directly with their customers and identify the reason for their call, enabling them to be put in touch quickly with an advisor or an automated service to answer the call.

That's what voice assistants are all about: answering a caller's query as quickly and simply as possible. When it comes to voice-assisted customer relations, the key is to support customers in solving a problem, rather than talking about it for hours on end. Thanks to their ability to understand natural language, to use a channel that is suitable for simple exchanges, and to integrate easily into the information systems of large companies, voice assistants are a natural part of the customer call handling process.

Setting up a conversational assistant for a French telecom operator

A pioneer in voice assistants for customer relations, Bouygues Telecom is constantly improving the comprehensibility of its solution to make it simple and effective. And the work pays off! Over 30 million calls are routed to the Group's call center agents or to stand-alone modules 24/7, with performance rates of over 95%. By optimizing the contact process, the caller gains in fluidity and speed of processing, while the operator optimizes its call flows to improve the service provided by its advisors. In fact, calls are now immediately directed to the right skills, and the first caller resolution rate has risen sharply. This creates a win-win relationship between callers and the operator. The operator can give its customers more autonomy where possible, or offer expertise and support during the exchange phases between its customers and its online advisors.

Sensitive to the challenges of the data lifecycle and compliance with the RGPD, players like ViaDialog have taken the opposite tack to the cloud services implemented by the major international players. By prioritizing data security and a specialized approach for each customer, these French companies are pulling their weight by offering a personalized experience and control over the entire lifecycle of assistants and data.

Callbots, an operational reality

Today, voice assistants feed into customer relationship management tools upstream of the contact process, facilitating call handling so that the online advisor can fully concentrate on the customer and his or her needs. This is not a revolution in the making, but an operational reality that is helping to renew the customer/advisor relationship. One thing is certain: artificial intelligence will never replace the human relationship, but it will greatly reduce caller irritation and offer significant operational gains. Today, the hybridization of customer relations is no longer a myth, nor an exploratory field, and in France hundreds of millions of calls a year are directed by telephone voice assistants. Some players are making a lasting impact on this landscape, such as ViaDialog, which alone handled more than 40 million calls a year in 2019.

Last update: October 26, 2021

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