Speech recognition saves Aussie Post A$500,000

Australia Post has invested in a speech recognition system for incoming calls, reducing call costs by 80 percent and allowing Post staff to be transferred to more complex tasks.Implemented in June, the Inference Communications speech recognition system answers calls requesting information such as the location of post offices, postcodes of suburbs, trading hours and passport application enquiries.
Australia Post's NSW contact center receives 10,000 calls a day, according to the company, 1,500 of which are now answered by the speech recognition system.
The average call time with a human operator was 135 seconds, NSW Australia Post customer contact center manager Eddie Sayad said, while the average call time with the speech recognition system is now 89 seconds, with customers tending to ask fewer questions to the automated system. [click heading for more]