IVR

Nuance Communications has announced that recent trials and deployments of the Nuance (News - Alert) Mobile Care product has "proven to reduce calls being directed to live agents by over sixty percent."

The product is engineered to give users the ability to self-solve simple problems, including customer care and billing, directly and instantly on the handset.  This is being pitched as a way to eliminate wait times for customer service agents and reduce costs.

"The growing complexity of mobile handsets and services has led to a significant increase in customer care call volumes and resultant costs to operators," said Tony Cripps, Principal Analyst, Ovum (News - Alert). "Products that let operators fix common problems directly on a user's device without involving a live agent offer both user experience and cost saving benefits, especially important in the current economy."

Way back in 2005 TMC reported that ScanSoft, Inc., and Nuance closed the merger of the two companies, originally announced in early May 2005. As consideration, Nuance shareholders received 0.77 shares of ScanSoft common stock and $2.20 of cash for each share of Nuance common stock that they own.

The combination of these two top speech companies, formerly each other's largest competitor, brought together what was described as "the most comprehensive portfolio of speech applications, technologies and experience in the industry."

Based on aggregate data from deployments and trials of Nuance Mobile Care in North America and Europe, according to company officials, the average live agent call costs approximately five bucks and the average subscriber initiates a call to customer service once a month. With the potential of deflecting over sixty percent of calls with an on-device, self-service options, well, do the math yourself, but it could translate into cost savings and an opportunity to extend self-service to the mobile device.

Using Nuance Mobile Care as it's installed for clients today, customers can make account inquiries or pay bills directly without having to wait in queue, which has proven frustrating for users. With on-device self-service, Nuance has found, customers "gain more control of when and how they access help, and in a more relevant and intuitive way." 

Nuance officials cite research showing, they say, that nine out of ten users preferred "the ease and speed" of products like Nuance Mobile Care over "other customer service options."

The product lets customers view their current plan details and upgrade their plan based on usage, and it promises support for a wide range of handset platforms including Windows Mobile, Symbian (News - Alert), BREW and other proprietary operating systems.