Putting speech to work at Homeserve Claims Management

Homeserve Claims Management initially investigated a traditional IVR system when it was looking for a more effective way of receiving updates from its national network of emergency repair contractors. However, when the company examined the benefits offered by a speech-based application, its board quickly approved the project. The company’s Head of IT, Chris Nicholls, explains how a speech approach worked for his organisation.

“With an expanding business and hundreds of emergency repair contractors working around the country, our claims handlers were spending too much time chasing up contractors who hadn’t given us updates on the jobs they had carried out for Homeserve. We needed this information to provide feedback for our customers, and also to make sure we were meeting our Service Level Agreements.

“Before we even looked at technologies such as IVR and speech, we first took the time out to really think about our users – in this case the hundreds of different contractors. They are all typically in and out of our customers’ houses or in their vans, so they needed a solution that was both easy to use and would fit in with their working lives. It’s all too easy to just implement a technology because you can, but my advice would always be to first concentrate on how and where the system is going to be used.

“At Homeserve we’ve had previous projects that relied on handheld devices such as PDAs, and whilst the benefits these devices bring to an employed workforce are widely accepted, this approach wasn’t always suitable for our contractors. We wanted a less complex approach for this application, and because all of our contractors had mobile phones, it made more sense to build a solution around this channel.

“We’d initially thought that a traditional IVR approach might be suitable, but when we were taken through the potential benefits that a speech application could bring we were very interested. Initially I thought that a speech-based solution might not be well-received by our contractors – but in hindsight that hasn’t proved an issue at all. In terms of cost, speech wasn’t much more expensive than IVR, and while both approaches offered the same levels of functionality we felt that a speech-based application would be easier for our contractors to use.

“I was also particularly impressed by how far speech technology had evolved over the last couple of years, with both the speed and quality of voice recognition improving dramatically,” added Chris. “However, we were also aware that this wasn’t just a technology you could install and get on with it. Our experience has shown that the more thought and effort you put in at the start really pays off. We made sure we worked with a specialist Voice Self-service partner that understood about the structure of call paths in speech-based applications, and how you’ve got to ask the right questions if you want to be sure of getting relevant answers.

“With the right speech design in place, we’ve been able to build an application that’s been able to take a business process – getting regular updates from our contractors – and turn it from a bottleneck into a fully-integrated, functional and successful solution. Now we are aware of when contractors are experiencing delays, we are able to offer our assistance early on, improving the service we provide to our customers.

“What we’ve seen is that a correctly-designed and configured speech-based solution can play an important role in our business. We now see speech as a proven technology, and one that we’re confident will play an expanding role in our evolving customer service infrastructure,” concluded Chris.