Sam Jackel, project director of contact center transformation at Westpac, Australia’s oldest bank, will speak at the SpeechTEK Europe conference http://www.speechtek.com/europe2011, taking place this week in London. In the interview that follows, he talks about how his company changed once it took a customer-centric approach to its speech solutions.    

SpeechTEK: Your presentation at SpeechTEK Europe will talk about a customer-centric approach to open speech recognition. Can you tell us more about that?

Jackel: Too often we focus on projects such as these from the angle of the technology. These are not technology projects; these are people projects, starting with the people who use the technology, our customers, to the people who answer customer calls, our agents. Organizations too often focus on call flows and speech recognition. Westpac has taken a different approach and designed everything out of the system that users do not like and relied heavily on customers and bankers to design the system. Ongoing user and system testing ensures customer-centric results.

SpeechTEK: What role does change management have to play in a successful speech deployment?

Jackel: Change management plays a critical role in successful speech deployment. It's the glue between the people domain and the technology domain. It's often the part of project management that is neglected at the end of the implementation lifecycle. Without sticky and effective change management, the link between the technology and people domain often breaks, meaning the project has failed even though the technology may be working well. Successful change management in large organizations, like contact centers in banking, requires advocacy from your agents.

SpeechTEK: What are the critical aspects for success?

Jackel: Testing from users, bankers, and customers, is key as is strong change management that focuses on the key messages and success factors for the project. A clear key performance indicator framework for success, communicated and understood by project stakeholders, is also critical. And the KPI framework needs to be reported on to show that the project is demonstrating value to the customer experience and also contributing to the bottom line.

Jackel: I have yet to see real innovation in the deployment of the technology, though I look forward to learning of any new developments from other speakers and industry experts at the event. If I was to be biased I would say the Westpac delivery is getting close, given its customer-centric approach and the use of customer data and business intelligence to simplify the call flow. The experience also carefully integrates customer information and self-service options where appropriate to ensure customers are fully informed when they get through to bankers.

SpeechTEK: What about the future for speech technology (and/or the contact center)? What are your predictions?

Jackel: We are going to see a convergence of channels and input methods. The proliferation of smartphones opens up a whole new world of communication with organizations and allows a far richer experience that extends beyond just voice and speech recognition. I'll speak to this more during my presentations at the conference.

The full conference program for SpeechTEK Europe can be found here. In addition to the main conference, the event includes the presentation of the Multimodal Challenge Awards, the SpeechTEK Europe EXPO, a networking reception open to all, and industry meetings hosted by AVIOS and AVIxD.

Online registration is now closed, but you can register on site at the event as a conference delegate or expo visitor. Stop by the Registration Desk located in the Shannon Suite of the Copthorne Tara Hotel. Directions to the conference venue can be found here.