For many medium- to large-sized businesses, the auto attendant has become a crucial tool, helping to provide reliable and prompt customer service, accelerate internal communications, and lower the cost of telephony operations.
Customers are now able to connect to their desired party by simply saying their name, thanks to advanced speech recognition and call routing capabilities. Thus, businesses no longer require live operators and receptionist support.
Auto attendant systems also enable customers to dial into the company phone system at any time, which helps companies extend customer support beyond normal company hours. Even further, company employees now have the chance to access pertinent vendors and business contacts through the speech interface, thus boosting productivity for today’s on-the-go business professionals.
In addition, companies achieve greater flexibility with auto attendants, as they can create customized greetings, which offer customers important information about company operating hours. Greetings can also be customized for certain situations like inclement weather and emergency closings.
The biggest advantage of a speech-enabled auto attendant is that it allows businesses to offload a large amount of operator-assisted calls, while simultaneously maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction and retention. This, in turn, helps companies reduce their overall operating costs.
While many of today’s auto attendant solutions are “off-the-shelf,” they lack the benefits offered by managed services. They may be low cost, but the vendors of these auto attendant systems often take a “set-it-up-and-forget-it” approach to customer service. While they provide the customer with a Web-based administrative panel for controlling basic functions like adjusting call routing and updating the directory, the company’s team is fully responsible for monitoring and maintaining the system on a regular basis.
An expert in speech-enabled auto attendant solutions for medium- to large-sized businesses, Parlance Corp., takes a different approach. Using a fully managed service solution, Parlance delivers a speech-enabled auto attendant that guarantees system accuracy and customer satisfaction.
According to Parlance Marketing Manager Mark Bedard, Parlance tries to “allow our customers to eliminate or consolidate operator positions by off-loading the majority of the calls going to the operator." Its fully managed service, nameConnector, takes on full responsibility for the success of each customer’s system. nameConnector remains as an on-site system, but each system is fully managed from the company's central office in order to keep the directory up-to-date as well as to proactively troubleshoot any issues with the system.
To learn more about Parlance Corp.'s fully managed auto attendant service, nameConnector, click here.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell