Transcript Introducing Caren, the Human Digital Assistant

SpeechTEK West 2007 Conference
Track A: Contact Center Automation
San Francisco, February 23rd 2007
Self caring on the web…
with a human touch
A Human Digital Assistant in Telecom Italia
Rosanna Duce, Vice President, Loquendo
Andrew McInnes, Vice President Sales, H-care
H-care is a company growing in H-FARM
Loquendo: Leading Innovator in Speech Technology
Global company with over 30 years experience in Speech
Technologies
Complete set of Multilingual technologies on a wide spectrum of
devices
Full support of international standards
Many crucial partnerships in a wide variety of applications:
customer care and self-service applications
telecommunications markets and financial sectors
public transport networks
assistive software
car navigation
etc.
Human Digital Assistant in Telecom Italia – Case study
presented by H-care
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
2
Prize AVIOS-SpeechTEK West
2005: “Best Innovation in Multi-Lingual
Speech Synthesis”
2006: “Best Innovation in Speech Synthesis”
H-care: the vision
Products & Services are increasing in quantity,
complexity, segmentation, personalization.
The current approach to customer-care will lead to
costs that are too high.
Self-caring is going to be fundamental since
businesses won’t be able to rely mostly on human
contact with the customer.
Traditional customer care front-desk services will be
substituted by online self-services on PCs, mobile
phones, digital TVs, and kiosks at selected locations.
Customers will be “electronic-only”.
In this scenario, the approach to customer assistance
will be more and more the key to success in a
company.
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
3
H-care: the idea
To build a software human-like agent able to:
appear, act, speak, interact like a live operator
evolve the concept of standard text&graphic user
interfaces
leverage on the enterprise knowledge and IT
infrastructure
be scalable for massive deployment
be customizable by 3rd parties for vertical
applications
The possibility to offer a human-like,
proactive, multichannel and multimodal
customer assistance is the solution to the new
generation of customer care services.
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
4
Human Digital Assistant
the innovative multichannel platform
The Human Digital Assistant is a digital customer operator that
can be used to supply services and customer assistance to
customers through the Web, mobile phones, TVs and kiosks.
H-Care’s unique technology permits the building of a virtual
character that can interact with the end user in a personalized way.
Real-time streaming allows Caren to appear in video created in
real-time and personalized for each user with dynamic content that
can be constantly updated.
HDA’s built-in logic, her memory and corporate information at her
disposal from external systems (Erp, Crm, Cti, etc.) can be
considered when a personalized interaction is required.
Web
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
IP TV
Broadcast Television
5
Mobile
Kiosk
Human Digital Assistant
the innovative multichannel platform
HDA is designed to be easily embedded in an
existing self-service infrastructure.
HDA technology leverages real-time streaming,
3D rendering and state-of-the-art Text-ToSpeech from Loquendo to deliver a highly
personalized customer experience.
The Authoring enviroment allows non-technical
business users to map the content and actions of
the assistant, to defined business processes.
HDA is a carrier-grade platform, scalable up to
thousands of concurrent users.
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
6
Caren @ Telecom Italia
March 2006: Telecom Italia introduces the
Human Digital Assistant technology
in order to provide:
Guidance for self-service functions
Assistance in billing analysis
Targeted promotions
Requests/complaints management
Information: real time billing, provisioning
process, new offers
Complaints: billing issues, on-line payments,
services
Change Order/Variations: plans, payment
methods
Technical Assistance on ADSL
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
7
Telecom Italia Faces the Future
R. Ruggiero, CEO of Telecom Italia - March 8th, 2006 - Announces the HDA
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
8
Demonstration
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
9
What customers say about Caren?
Customer Survey, 2 months after Telecom Italia service launch
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
10
What is she doing today in Telecom Italia?
Customer Care through C/C
Customer base
(consumers)
Daily Calls to Contact Center (Avg)
Web Self-Service with HDA
18 M
Web Self-Service user base
1.4 M
186 K
Daily Visits to HDA
21 K
(avg)
Calls managed by HDA (monthly)
Diverted by the C/C front-end
Project launch: June 2006
HDA managed over 700,000 customer care requests
A total of 69 million items of video content served to customers
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
11
194 K
8,3%
How could she perform tomorrow?
Web Self-Service user base
CS activities supported by HDA
18 M
69%
45%
3.3 M
24%
1.5 M
500 K
Customers
2006
2007
2008
2006
Active users on Telecom Italia 187 self-service web site
Actuals
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
2007
2008
More activities will be supported thanks to IT integrations
Estimations for Telecom Italia
12
Project evolution in Telecom Italia
Home / Office
Call, Web, IPTV
Store / Point of Sales
Kiosks, Airports, Events
Mobile
Call, MMS, Wap
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
13
Digital
Integrated
Customer
Assistant
Benefits
for Telecom Italia
for Customers
reduce burden to call center front-end
see the “HDA” as the unique interface
cost saving on call center headcount
to all customer care business
reduce response time from back-office
processes
for all requests acquired through HDA
standardized service levels
HDA as a testimonial:
gain more transparency on caring
the Face of the Customer Care
processes
acquire information about customer
increased user experience
behaviour
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
14
What will be the benefits for
Customer Operations enabled by HDA?
Calls diverted from CC to HDA
Human Operator Equivalent
340
27%
190
15%
100
8.3%
2006
2007
2008
2006
Calls managed by HDA instead of call-center operators
Actuals
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
2007
Virtual Operators performed by the HDA platform
Estimations
15
2008
Who else could use HDA ?
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
16
How HDA works through a web channel
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
17
Server-side face generation architecture
for carrier-grade scalability
Server-Side Multi-Assistant
Real-Time Generation
Encode
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
OpenGL
Render
Animate
18
Loquendo
TTS
Digital Assistants
Designed to fit every customer’s needs
FACE DETAILS
3D MODELLING & ANIMATION
SOCIAL ROLE DESIGN
Copyright © 2007 H-care srl - All rights reserved
19
FACIAL TEXTURE
Contacts
www.h-care.it
[email protected]
H-care S.r.l.
Via Sile, 51 - 31056
Roncade (TV) Italy
Ph. +39.0422789611
www.loquendo.com
[email protected]
Loquendo
Via Valdellatorre, 4
Turin, Italy
Andrew McInnes
[email protected]
Ph. +33.626045268
Rosanna Duce
[email protected]
Ph. +39.0112913111
H-care is a company growing in H-FARM