National Blood Service trials speech recognition

National Blood Service (NBS) has successfully trialled an automated speech recognition solution efficiently guiding thousands of blood donors to make an appointment, or handling a general enquiry. Feedback has revealed a 90% confidence in the system.

The technology was deployed by SpeechStorm, partnering with outsourced contact centre provider, Teleperformance. The call routing product (Information Line) and Questionnaire Builder were deployed to randomly select callers across the National Blood Service’s hundreds of thousands of donors to gather their views and opinions of the new speech recognition service.

Callers were also offered an opportunity to participate in a short, automated speech-based, survey to give feedback on their experience of the speech service. The survey produced very positive results, highly significant given the random selection of participants. 89% confirmed that they found the system easy to use and a very impressive 90% said they would be confident to use the speech recognition service again.

Ian Hamerton is the National Blood Service’s Contact Centre Manager and spearheaded the project to trial speech recognition as a service enhancement for his customers. “I was sceptical for some time about speech recognition and its appropriateness for our service but as standards improved and consumers became more accepting of using speech, I decided that it was time to offer the service to our customers in a continuing attempt to improve customer service levels,” Ian explained. “Offering speech to a random cross section of our customer base and then checking their satisfaction levels is a very independent and true yard-stick by which to measure its success and we have been delighted by the overwhelmingly positive feedback our customers have given to the new service.”

Ian’s objective is to continuously improve service to his customers and he ardently believes that service is about offering choice and letting the customer choose what is most appropriate for them. “Any speech service must give the customer the option to ‘opt out’ to a live person when they need to, and it must also detect if they are having problems with the system and prioritise them through to a live agent. Speech recognition is a very powerful tool and service enhancement when used appropriately for the right processes.”

You can contact the National Bllod Service here