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Energy giant adopts "human sounding" voicerecognition technology
One of the UK's largest consumer energy suppliers has adopted new speech recognition technology to handle 21 per cent of calls to its call centres.
EDF Energy, which supplies seven per cent of the UK's electricity and has over five million customer accounts, is said to be enjoying "major efficiency gains" from using the technology.
Its call centres receive around 12 million calls a year, with around 10 million being dealt with by staff, stopping them from dealing with more complex issues.
Since going live at the end of July 2005, the application has handled the equivalent of 2.5 million calls a year.
Mike Belton, head of management information at EDF Energy, said that the increasingly "human sounding" recognition technology could eventually handle double that amount.
"Our business is growing but it doesn't necessarily make economic sense to keep expanding the call centre, so we need to be able to work smarter with the resources we have already," he said.
"EDF Energy recognises that customers are increasingly more comfortable using self service facilities which are conveniently available 24 hours a day."
Voice responses from its new programme reflect the increasing subtlety of the latest systems.
"We've observed customers talking to the system as though they think they're really dealing with a human being," added Mr Belton.
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