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Customer Self Service using the Virtual Speech Agent (VSA) from Fluency Voice TechnologyMark Steinweg | General Manager, Carlson Leisure Travel ServicesAugust 7, 2006

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Agenda

• Carlson Companies Inc.

• Project Objectives

• Why Fluency

• The Results

• Next Steps

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Carlson Companies Inc.

• Industry leading solutions provider in travel, hospitality and marketing services

• One of the largest privately held global companies

• Operates in 140 countries; over 160,000 employees

• System-wide sales from its global, company-owned and franchised operations $21 billion

• Sales from Carlson-owned and managed operations total $7 billion

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Operating Groups

Corporatebusiness

travel

Marketing services, Incentive programs

& merchandise

Restaurants, Hotels & Cruise Line

Retail travel franchises, loyalty program fulfillment

Travel award redemptions for credit card companies and financial institutions, leisure travel services (cltsloyalty.com)

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The Carlson Company Brands

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• Service customer calls through more cost effective channels– Initial phases of travel booking calls are common

• Could be automated at a lower cost to handle than with live agents• Customer information accumulated can be screen popped to agents

– Consistent and quick customer self service access to FAQ’s, avoiding agents entirely for non-sales related calls

– Customers can be routed back to our client’s Customer Service department for non-travel related questions and resolution

• Maintain technological advantage– Speech IVR capabilities becoming more prevalent

• Near term business need – Large system migration expected to introduce agent inefficiencies– Needed to reduce call volumes presented to the agents

to achieve service levels

Reasons to Deploy a Speech IVR

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Desired Outcomes• Strengthen client loyalty on B2B2C model

– Partnered with client on solution design and development– Improved our ability to consistently achieve service levels

• Enhanced customer experience– Self service capabilities– Improve quality and reduced variation through consistent work flow

and information delivery on program rules, points balances– Easy to use, minimize customer dissatisfaction with a speech IVR

• Business case – Lower cost to service customers through speech IVR automation

and intelligent call routing• Reduce non-sales calls being presented to agents• Route customers faster to the agent who can help them

– Increase sales by qualifying and prescreening customers

• Maintain a technical advantage over competitors

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Why Fluency? The choice between custom-built solutions

and speech application products

• Faster time to market – Speech application products deployed in weeks, not months

• Lowers risk – Pre-built solution is pre-configured, pre-tuned – Speech best practice encapsulated in the product– Predictable flow of enhancements in Fluency product road map

• Lower cost of ownership – Fluency’s Management Console provides solution flexibility – Easy to change call flows and prompts with in-house resources

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Fluency’s VSA Management Console means the speech application can be maintained and enhanced in house

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What Happened

• Fluency’s VSA product configured to meet business needs– Caller qualification, call routing, and self-service for FAQs

• Four week deployment accelerates ROI – QA cycle a matter of days before full production roll out– Fluency’s VSA taking 50,000 calls in first month

• Great customer experience delivered – Customers routed to right agents or right channel– Minimal customer and agent complaints

• Call center agents embrace the technology– Agents have more time to handle revenue-generating calls

• Business case proven– Fluency’s VSA reduces call flow to agents by >20%– Sales conversion rates improved >15%

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Lesson Learned

• Speech needs to be part of an end-to-end work flow solution– Requires seamless integration with adjacent systems, processes

and agent work flow– Protects customer experience and promotes agent acceptance

• “Prove and Move” with targeted solution delivery– Automate discrete processes first to deliver benefit fast – Then extend automation to cover wider range of processes – Minimize “points of failure” or other dependencies

• Speech is automating a business process– Automation of an optimized process delivers a bigger benefit– Design is better with knowledge of what your customers want to do

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Next Steps for VSA

• Additional deployments to service more B2B2C partners – Leverage and multiply the value from existing investments in

Fluency application products and learnings

• Utilize additional Fluency products to automate more process – VSA IDVS for customer identification and points balance – VSA Locator for capturing customer itinerary information – VSA Payment Capture for automated bookings

• Global roll out and enterprise footprint – Fluency’s VSA can reduce call center costs even when utilizing

outsourced operations in India

• Personalization – Integrating speech self service with wider CRM strategies

and customer preferencing tactics

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