Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Centrelink voice engine smooth talks clients

Linking natural speech recognition technology to transactional systems has long been thought a risky business, however Australia's largest multi-client service agency Centrelink says it finally has got the formula right - up to a point.

Over the last month, Centrelink claims to have migrated 30,000 clients, predominantly students required to report their casual earnings under the Working Credit initiative, onto a natural speech recognition platform which allows them to update their income status with the agency in almost real time.

"It automatically updates people's [client records] which are then processed [on a batch run] every 24 hours. We trialled it on students because they would be able to help identify what worked and what we needed to improve, and give us the sort of feedback we needed," said Centrelink national project support manager Anne Woods.

While the new system currently accounts for only 0.5 per cent of Centrelink's approximately six million clients, the agency claims the government saves two-fold. Firstly by making on-time and correct payments, which reduces error correction and reprocessing, and secondly by freeing up call centre staff to be deployed in areas where greater direct customer contact is needed.

The Centrelink voice solution is based on the ScanSoft OpenSpeech Recognizer platform, which operates as an additional software layer applied to the interactive voice response (IVR) functions of telephony network kits such as Genesys, Nortel or Cisco boxes. Rather than processing DTMF or touchtone signals, Recognizer pulls the response direct from voice, then pulls options and information from the back-end database of choice.

Even with such initial success, Centrelink management says it is acutely aware that speech recognition is not yet a universal solution. Woods said that services for clients who lacked English language skills - which for Centrelink is large, will be provided by people with skilled in those languages.

Although the Recognizer product has been successfully configured to different linguistic taxonomies overseas, Woods said multi-lingual speech recognition would only be explored if significant demand was demonstrated.

Centrelink general manager John Wadeson said that while voice recognition certainly cuts costs, the real gain was in improved service delivery and customer satisfaction, namely a huge drop off in complaints.

"We haven't really had any, which was a big surprise for us, but it's great. When we started [the Working Credit voice recognition trial], it had all the hallmarks of a major government agency failing its clients yet again. But the customers seem genuinely happy to use it which is just great," Wadeson beamed.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Centrelink, Genesys, ScanSoft, Touchtone

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • IDC Whitepaper: Generating Proven Business Value with EMC Next-Generation Backup and Recovery
    IDC interviewd ten companies that have deployed EMC backup and recovery solutions, including EMC Data Domain and EMC Avamar. Some of the customers also had EMC NetWorker. The purpose was to identify and quantify the resulting business value of each project, in order to calculate a cumulative return on investment. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • HP Security Action Plan for Enterprise Printing and Imaging
    Security is a part of how we work. When you walk through the front door of your office every morning, you probably pass a level of security. At your desk, it’s likely you log in to your computer and access files over a secure server. From security badges and ID cards to network firewalls and software security, it may seem like your organisation has taken every measure to protect its property, people and data. This action plan outlines a step-by-step approach to help you develop a plan that improves the security of your printing and imaging environment and boosts your business.
    Learn more »
  • Improving Productivity in the Connected Enterprise Through Collaboration
    In the market for collaborative applications, a large convergence is beginning to take hold, and the consumerization of IT is central to this movement. The technologies that people use as consumers are impacting the way employees, customers, and partners want to interact and collaborate at work. People want to take the same technology experiences that are available at home and plug them into their daily work lives. This movement is setting worker expectations as both employees and corporate consumers. Workers need to have the choice and flexibility to consume the applications they want, where they want, and on their preferred device. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments