Who's Answering the Phone?

A telephone system that collects information can also help a company prioritize calls. The system might identify a major client and send that call to a senior sales associate. If she’s not answering, the call might then go to her cell phone or home phone. A call from a less profitable customer, by contrast, might be assigned to a junior salesperson, and to voice mail if the junior associate is not at his desk.

Once a call reaches an employee, the telephone system can integrate with the employee’s computer system. “We give them a screen full of information—who’s calling and their purchasing history,” Lawson says. That reduces customer frustration by eliminating the need to repeat an account number or other information, and helps the employee resolve the call quickly.

Some companies use only touch-tone features in their answering systems; others are moving toward voice recognition. “Ten years ago, when voice recognition came out, it didn’t work well,” says Ed Hixon, director of product management at Edina-based Amcom Software, Inc., which supplies telecommunications-system software.

“Algorithms have improved a lot in the last five years—they can cancel out background noise and deal with accents.”

Humana, for example, is experimenting with a voice recognition system that lets callers ask free-form inquiries. “We’ll start with easy, common questions like whether eyeglasses are covered,” Jones says. And they’ll still offer touch-tone as an option, particularly for keying in private information such as Social Security numbers.

Lawson describes a future in which a telephone system may be able to read personality and mood from a caller’s voice and match that person with a compatible employee. Someone who sounds angry might get an agent faster; Midwesterners will speak with other Midwesterners, extroverts with other extroverts. “It definitely won’t be used by everybody—it’s a matter of whether or not it’s cost effective,” Lawson says.

Automation: Not for Everyone

With all those automated options, it can be a challenge to decide which—if any—are right for a particular business. “It’s not a technology question anymore—it’s a business-needs and a business-image question,” Hines says. The automation that is acceptable to one company’s customers might irritate the patrons of another firm, so decision makers need to consider their business model and customer needs.